What the work is
Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an American interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts. It is based in New York City and was founded in 1981 by the architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio. Charles Renfro joined in 1997 and became a partner in 2004, and Benjamin Gilmartin became the fourth partner in 2015. Its international body of work includes urban landscapes such as the High Line in New York and Zaryadye Park in Moscow, institutional buildings including The Broad and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum, and many installations, exhibitions and performance projects.
How it was made
The studio works across disciplines and has made several projects with partners. The High Line was a collaboration with James Corner, listed as 2009 to 2019, and the World Trade Center Viewing Platform was made with Rockwell Group and Kevin Kennon. The Museum of Modern Art expansion was done with Gensler, and the installation Open House with Droog. Be Your Self was made with Garry Stewart and the Australian Dance Theatre. The MacArthur Foundation described the practice as uniting design, performance and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism, exploring how space functions in culture and treating architecture as the physical manifestation of social relationships.
What works
The record of projects is wide. Architecture includes the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2007), the Lincoln Center redesign and master plan (2007 to 2011), the Cooper Hewitt entrance and renovation (2014), The Broad in Los Angeles (2015), Stanford’s McMurtry Building (2015), the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive expansion (2016), 15 Hudson Yards and The Shed (both 2019), and the Tianjin Juilliard School (2021). Early installations include Traffic at Columbus Circle (1981), Memory Theatre (1986) and Para-Site at MoMA (1989). The studio has also designed exhibitions, among them How Wine Became Modern (2011) and The Art of Scent: 1889 to 2010, and performance work such as Jet Lag with The Builders Association (1998).
What does not
Not every project stands or is finished. The installation Facsimile (2004) was dismantled in 2014, the Museum of Image & Sound in Rio de Janeiro was listed as in construction, and V&A East Storehouse and the expansion of The Broad had estimated completion dates of 2025 and 2028. Some of the early work now exists as drawings, objects and ephemera held by the Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the installation Soft Sell (1993) is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
What it influenced
Recognition of the studio runs through awards, exhibitions and books. In 1999 the studio became the first architecture firm to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, and it was later inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and made fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Whitney Museum of American Art staged an early-career retrospective, Scanning, in 2003, and MAXXI opened Restless Architecture in 2024. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio were named among the Time 100 in 2009, and in 2022 Diller was one of three architects awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts. Books about the studio include Scanning, The Ciliary Function and Architecture After Images, and a retrospective monograph from Phaidon was due in 2025.
Is it worth your time
Yes, if you want to see how one studio moves between a park, a museum, an installation and a stage. Start with the High Line, The Broad or the Lincoln Center redesign, then look at the early installations to see where the studio began.
