La Sfacciata, Fondazione Targetti

 

Within the meetings organized by the Targetti Observatory on May 17, Elizabeth Diller will be an exceptional guest who will lecture on and reflect on the  work of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro studio of the past few years. The projects of the New York studio have always been related and often tangential to some of the most diverse disciplines such as art, theatre, literature and mechanics, always striving for new languages and visions.

After years of activities, experimentations and theatrical works, the studio has recently focused on public buildings and urban master plans. The various fields are always intersected without clear limits. Thus, videos, monitors and micro-chips have become a part of their work, even though Diller and Scofidio seem to be heading  back to the sensorial experience of architecture, one linked to the so called “synthetic” experience of the images continuously displayed on video screens. The patron enters the works, looks at them, touches them, becomes their subject, feeling consistency.

 

Through enquiry, Elizabeth Diller will lead the discussion through her experience, explaining the reasons behind her design, the potential of architecture for society, the importance for clients, and the political and social value which architecture (just like other forms of expression and other forms of art) has and continues to have in every day life. 

Diller and Scofidio progressively moved out of theaters and galleries and into the outlying areas of buildings. While not pertaining to closed and pre-determined spaces but  rather city spaces, their projects have progressively become urban projects. Their works inhabit the city and their projects become a visual art extension order to participate in the daily lives of its citizens. 

 

Their first large scale built up building, the Slither Building, dates back to 2000,. While a building like the Blur dissolves and disappears in the rarefaction it creates, one where visitors instantly understand they are entering a playful architecture, the Brasserie building implicates the user  against his will.

 

Clients enter a restaurant  and once inside, they realize that some videos are showing all the people entering the building to all the bystanders.

 

Thus, if at the beginning of Diller’s and Scofidio’s careers, the users were performing spectators, now the visitors and even the ramdon passerby become participants in their schemes.

Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio along with Charles Renfro wisely exemplify the synthesis of three possible and different ways of being an architect, by combining their professional practice, academic research and artistic experimentation, thus synthesizing different ways of practicing architecture and performing arts.

 

The ability and the will of consciously relate reality by  conveying a message and giving a personal interpretation  of daily life is hidden behind any gesture. On the basis of these principles, the use of discipline shall be clearly explained and debated by Elizabeth Diller through the office’s most recent projects such as the Lincoln Center, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and the rehabilitation project of the High Line in New York, where architecture clearly becomes a synthesis of urban ideology.

 

 

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an interdisciplinary firm integrating architecture, visual arts and performing arts. Their work ranges from buildings to urban master plans, from temporary installations and site-specific temporary installations, to multimedia theatre, from electronic media to publications. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio established D+S in 1979. Charles Renfro has been collaborating with them since 1997 and became partner in 2004.

Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio were awarded the Macarthur Foundation Fellowship (1999-2004), being the first ones to obtain it for architecture.

Some of their first works worth mentioning are Jet Lag, the Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate (A Delay in Glass) inspired from Duchamp’s work, Moving Target and the Brasserie restaurant. With the Blur Building marks a change of direction for the office and the start of many projects getting built. Among their latest works, are worth remembering the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, the School of American Ballet, the Lincoln Center project and the High Line rehabilitation project which is currently under construction in New York.

 

Elizabeth Diller was born in Lodz, Polond, in 1954. She attended the Cooper Union School of Art and graduated in architecture in 1979 from the Cooper Union School of Architecture. She teaches at Princeton University.

 

Ricardo Scofidio was born in New York City in 1935. He attended the Cooper Union School of Architecture and graduated from Columbia University in 1960. He teaches at Cooper Union. Before establishing studio Diller + Scofidio he partnered in Berman, Roberts, Scofidio studio which specialized in educational parks and residential projects.

 

Charles Renfro was born in Houston, Texas in 1964. He graduated from the Rice University and from Columbia University’s Advanced Architectural Design program, where he taught for three years. He worked in New York as an architect for 11 years. Before joining Diller & Scofidio, he worked in other studios such as Smith-Milller+Hawkinson and Ralph Appelbaum Associates.

 

tel. 055 3791285 – fax 055 3791394 – e.mail: osservatorioarchitettura@targetti.it