Diller Scofidio + Renfro


Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an American interdisciplinary design studio which integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. Based in New York City, the studio was founded by architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in 1981. Charles Renfro joined in 1997, and was named partner in 2004. Benjamin Gilmartin became the firm's fourth partner in 2015.
The studio's international body of work includes notable examples of urban landscape design, such as the High Line in New York and Zaryadye Park in Moscow; institutional buildings, including museums such as The Broad and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum; and various installations, exhibitions, and performance projects.

Recognition

In 1999, Diller Scofidio + Renfro were the first architecture firm to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, with the MacArthur Foundation stating that the firm has "created an alternative form of architectural practice that unites design, performance, and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism. Their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings."
Since then, Diller Scofidio + Renfro have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and made fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects. They have been awarded the National Design Award; the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; an Obie for off-Broadway theater production; the Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Academy in Rome; and various awards of the American Institute of Architects, including the AIA President's Award, the AIA Medal of Honor, the AIA Louis I. Kahn Award, and AIA Design Awards for numerous projects. In 2009, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio were named among the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, Fast Company named Diller Scofidio + Renfro the most innovative design practice in the profession and among the 50 most innovative companies in the world. More recent awards won by the firm have included the Lawrence Israel Prize and the Royal Academy of Arts' Architecture Prize. The Rubenstein Forum in Chicago, which Diller Scofidio + Renfro completed in 2020, won the Tall Building Award in 2022.
For her work with the studio, Elizabeth Diller has been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, selected as an Aspen Institute Harman-Eisner Artist in Residence, honored with the Barnard Medal of Distinction, and awarded the Jane Drew Prize. In 2022, she was one of three architects awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts.
Multiple drawings, objects, and ephemera from the firm's early years are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2003, the Whitney Museum of American Art held an early-career retrospective of the studio's work, Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio, recognizing and investigating the firm's unorthodox practice. The second major exhibition involving Diller Scofidio + Renfro's work, Restless Architecture, opened at MAXXI in 2024.

Selected projects

Architecture

Books written or edited by Diller Scofidio + Renfro include Flesh: architectural probes ; Back to the Front: Tourisms of War ; Blur: the Making of Nothing ; and Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, which chronicles the firm's decade of work on the redesign of New York City's Lincoln Center.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the subject of Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio, published by the Whitney Museum of American Art in tandem with their 2003 exhibition and including essays by Aaron Betsky, K. Michael Hays, and Laurie Anderson; the monograph Diller + Scofidio : The Ciliary Function by Guido Incerti, Daria Ricchi and Deane Simpson; and Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture After Images by Edward Dimendberg. A new retrospective monograph of the studio's work will be published by Phaidon Press in 2025.

Documentaries

  • ''Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line''