City of the Future is a bi-weekly podcast from Sidewalk Labs that explores ideas and innovations that will transform cities.
In the final episode of season 2, hosts Eric Jaffe and Vanessa Quirk discuss the past, present, and future of responsive architecture with Sidewalk Labs’ director of public realm Jesse Shapins, engineer and microclimate expert Goncalo Pedro, Bubbletecture author Sharon Francis, and renowned architect Liz Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
On the latest episode of Time Sensitive, a newly launched podcast produced the New York-based “conscious entertainment” media company The Slowdown, co-host Spencer Bailey interviews architect Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in a blockbuster-length conversation. Diller talks with Bailey about designing everything from the High Line to The Shed to the upcoming expansion of MoMA, and also delves deeper into her past, revealing how it was her mother’s idea for her “go into architecture, and if not architecture, then dentistry.” But upon getting into the Cooper Union and studying with professors like Peter Eisenman and John Hejduk, Diller’s path was clear—for the most part, anyway; it’s necessary to listen to the full episode to see why her journey to where she is today was indeed unconventional and roundabout.
In the 12 months since 2018 International Women’s Day, we have seen many female architects come to fore of the design discourse. From Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell’s curation of the 2018 Venice Biennale to Frida Escobedo's celebrated design for the Serpentine Pavilion, the architectural newsfeeds from the past twelve months have played host to many signs of change in a traditionally male-dominated profession.
ArchDaily has also been busy over the past year, publishing stories such as twelve prominent women in architectural photography, seven influential women of the Bauhaus, and the women redefining success in architecture. Beyond news and editorials, the honorary lists and award ceremonies of prominent architectural institutions from around the world have also paid tribute to some of the world’s leading and emerging female architects.
Architect Liz Diller and architectural photographer Hélène Binet have been awarded the 2019 Jane Drew and Ada Louise Huxtable Prizes, respectively, for their exceptional contributions to the field of architecture. The prizes are part of the eighth edition of the Women in Architecture Awards founded jointly by The Architect's Journal and The Architectural Review.
This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Architecture You Can Smell? A Brief History of Multisensory Design."
What comes to mind when you encounter the term “sensory design”? Chances are it is an image: a rain room, a funky eating utensil, a conspicuously textured chair. But the way things actually feel, smell, even taste, is much harder to capture. This difficulty points to how deeply ingrained the tyranny of vision is. Might the other senses be the keys to unlocking broader empirical truths? Does the ocular-centric bias of art, architecture, and design actually preclude a deeper collective experience?
DS+R partner Elizabeth Diller has designed two new pieces for Prada's 2019 spring/summer womenswear collection. Created from Prada nylon as part of the Prada Invites project, the two pieces include a garment bag with utilitarian zippers and buckles and a raincoat that transforms from the same yoke style bag. The yoke style bag was also imagined as a lighter item for women to carry sketchpads, sandwiches and lipstick. The Prada invitation was made to expand the company's fascination with multifaceted representations of contemporary femininity.
It is so refreshing to hear the words: “We do everything differently. We think differently. We are still not a part of any system or any group.” In the following excerpt of my recent conversation with Liz Diller and Ric Scofidio at their busy New York studio we discussed conventions that so many architects accept and embrace, and how to tear them apart in order to reinvent architecture yet again. In New York the founding partners of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro have shown us exactly that with their popular High Line park, original redevelopment of the Lincoln Center, sculpture-like Columbia University Medical Center in Washington Heights, and The Shed with its movable “turtle shell” that’s taking shape in the Hudson Yards to address the evolving needs of artists because what art will look like in the future is an open question.
Continuing in her firm’s tradition of blurring the lines between architecture, art and environment, Elizabeth Diller, founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is producing an opera for the High Line. Dubbed the “Mile Long Opera,” the production will be set along New York’s new favorite attraction, which was designed by DS+R with James Corner and Piet Oudolf and opened to the public in 2009.
In the latest video from the Louisiana Channel, six architects – Bjarke Ingels, Liz Diller, Daniel Libeskind, Robert A.M. Stern, Thom Mayne, and Craig Dykers – share what it’s like to build in New York. From the High Line to the 9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at Ground Zero, the architects each describe their approach to designing in the iconic city.
In a must-read interview with Christopher Hawthorne of the Los Angeles Times, Liz Diller defends her firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and their design of the MoMA expansion.
Hawthorne asks some great, insightful questions: from whether or not architecture should be considered ephemeral to whether or not idiosyncratic architecture is more vulnerable to change. Diller responds with some fascinating points, claiming that if DS+R's ICA museum in Boston faced demolition, she'd understand because of the possibility that "at a certain point [a building] takes on another identity." But perhaps the most poignant response is the one that she gives regarding the maelstrom of negative criticism surrounding the demolition of the Folk Art Museum, saying, "We would be on the same side if we didn’t know all the details that we know." To learn more about those "details," read on for excerpts from the interview...
