Archinect - Features

Soapbox: Elizabeth Diller

2018-04-25T09:00:00-04:00

Soapbox is a weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

The Reluctant Architect: 15 Minutes with Liz Diller

2016-04-20T08:49:00-04:00

Elizabeth Diller, co-founding partner of Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, almost didn’t become an architect. In her student years at Cooper Union, Diller expressed a greater interest in pursuing film than in taking up traditional architectural practice, partly because the profession seemed like too much of a commercial pursuit. Some thirty-six years later, from the Broad Museum to Lincoln Center to The High Line, DS+R’s built work consistently pushes the visitor to experience space in an unanticipated way without providing a ready-made interpretation.

Liz Diller gets high: discussing The High Line's development with Christopher Hawthorne

2016-02-19T18:07:00-05:00

Few would have predicted that a “used-condom-strewn” elevated railway line running through what used to be seedy Chelsea would become one of New York City’s biggest cultural attractions. And yet, according to Elizabeth Diller in conversation with Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne at LAX Art on February 16, last year over seven million people walked Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s High Line. That’s about four million more than attended MoMA or even all of the Yankees games, making The High Line not just a renovated railway, but a literal cultural bridge between the pedestrian and the aesthetic realms.

The Broad Museum opens its doors for a look beyond the veil

2015-09-23T09:02:00-04:00

The white cube museum to end all white cube museums has touched down in Los Angeles. This past Sunday, the personal post-war and contemporary art collection owned by billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, housed in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s meshed white box, opened for public viewing as the brand new Broad Museum, located just south of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall on downtown’s Grand Avenue.