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Diller and Scofidio built their reputation by treating architecture as a medium for performance, media, installation and cultural criticism before accepting the scale of major buildings and public spaces. Geraldine Baum’s December 12, 2010, Los Angeles Times profile captures that transition: a small, deliberately experimental practice taking on Lincoln Center, the High Line, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Broad commission in Los Angeles while trying to keep its founding designers directly involved. The story is historical. Ricardo Scofidio died in March 2025, so the original partnership should not be described as unchanged today.
What “the business of architecture and artistry” meant
For Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, artistry was not decoration added after a building was designed. It was a way of deciding what architecture could do. Their work joined spatial design to performance, projected images, digital media, installation, writing and cultural theory. A project could be temporary, atmospheric or theatrical and still test ideas that later mattered in permanent buildings and public space.
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That approach also changed the business question. Instead of asking only which building type a conventional practice could deliver, the partners asked whether a project was intellectually and materially interesting enough to pursue. Scofidio stated the principle plainly in Baum’s 2010 profile: “If it interests us we would take it on.” The sentence describes selectivity rather than a rejection of commercial architecture. Their eventual commissions show how an experimental method could be carried into institutions with demanding programs, budgets and public responsibilities.
How the partnership began
Diller and Scofidio met at Cooper Union in the late 1970s. Baum reports that they formed a professional partnership after Diller graduated in 1979. Their early work deliberately questioned the conventions of architecture: the assumption that a building must be permanent, that a room has a single purpose, or that the architect’s job ends at the finished object.
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Performance and installation gave them a laboratory for those questions. Temporary structures could expose movement, weather, sound and spectatorship in ways that a conventional plan might conceal. Media could make an architectural boundary appear unstable. Cultural theory supplied another layer, asking who controls a public setting and how institutions frame an audience’s experience.
This was not architecture reduced to spectacle. The experiments tested practical matters—materials, circulation, environmental conditions and the behavior of crowds—while also testing the cultural assumptions behind a design brief. That combination became the foundation for the practice’s later move into buildings and urban projects.
The Blur pavilion: an experiment that made atmosphere architectural
Baum’s profile recounts the Blur pavilion, a temporary structure for the Swiss Expo made by projecting fine mist to form an artificial cloud. The article reports 13,000 fog nozzles and a cloud approximately 300 feet wide. Visitors entered an environment in which the boundary between architecture and weather was intentionally difficult to locate.
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For a construction audience, the lesson is direct. A conceptual premise becomes architecture only when the delivery team can make its invisible systems reliable. In Blur, the experience visitors perceived as a cloud depended on an extensive mechanical network. The project therefore connected artistic intent to engineering coordination rather than placing them in separate stages.
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From installations to major commissions
The 2010 profile presents a consequential change in scale. After years of experimental work, the studio was involved in major commissions including Lincoln Center, the High Line and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, alongside the Broad commission in Los Angeles. These examples belong to the article’s 2010 framing and should be read as a snapshot of that moment, not as a current project-status list.
The shift did not erase the earlier practice. It transferred its questions into larger institutional and civic settings. A performance-oriented understanding of sequence could inform how visitors move through a cultural building. An installation artist’s attention to atmosphere could shape a public realm. Media and visual framing could become part of how a museum, plaza or elevated park is encountered.
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| Phase of the practice | Project scale | Primary medium | Institutional or civic setting | What the 2010 account shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early partnership after Cooper Union | Small experimental commissions and investigations | Architecture combined with performance, installation and theory | Artistic and educational contexts | The partners questioned standard definitions of a building and its use. |
| Blur pavilion, as recounted by Baum | Temporary structure approximately 300 feet wide | Fine mist, environmental systems and visitor experience | Swiss Expo | An atmospheric concept required extensive technical infrastructure, including 13,000 reported fog nozzles. |
| Lincoln Center and other major commissions | Large institutional and public projects | Building design, public space and the studio’s art-inflected methods | Performing arts, museums and civic settings | The practice moved into consequential commissions without abandoning experimentation. |
| High Line, Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and Broad commission, in the 2010 profile | Urban, cultural and museum-scale work | Architecture and public-realm design informed by media and installation | New York, Boston and Los Angeles examples named by the article | The partners’ approach was being applied across different clients and building types. |
How the studio handled growth
Large commissions create a managerial problem for any design practice: adding enough people to deliver complex work without turning the founding designers into distant names. Baum’s profile makes that tension central. Charles Renfro described a rapid increase after Lincoln Center: “We had a terrifying growth spurt after Lincoln Center, from six to 35 people, and now we’re at almost 60,” Renfro said in the December 12, 2010, Los Angeles Times profile. Those are period staffing figures, not a statement about the studio’s current size.
Diller’s answer was to limit growth so the principals could remain part of design development. “We’ve kept the studio to a certain size that allows Rick and Charles and I to participate in all the work, to generate ideas for all the work and to see it through,” she told Baum in 2010. The statement identifies a specific operating model: principals are expected to generate ideas, review work throughout delivery and stay connected to projects rather than handing them off after concept design.
For construction and consultant teams, that model has practical consequences. A principal-led studio can provide continuity of intent, but it also requires clear delegation, documentation and decision paths as a project grows. The more varied the media and systems, the more important it is to define who owns coordination, when performance criteria are fixed and how changes are approved. The 2010 profile does not provide a staffing chart or a universal formula; it shows the partners consciously treating scale as a design-management decision.
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What made the approach different from conventional building practice
Projects began with questions about experience
Rather than starting only with a building type, the practice often began with a question about perception: how a visitor moves, what a crowd sees, how an institution stages an encounter or where a boundary between inside and outside becomes uncertain. That orientation helps explain why installations and performances were not side projects. They were methods for studying architecture at full scale.
Media was spatial, not merely graphic
Projection, digital media and performance were treated as elements that could alter the reading of a space. A screen, image or event could redirect attention and change circulation. The consequence for a project team is that audiovisual and interactive systems may be part of the architectural concept, with implications for power, cooling, acoustics, access, maintenance and replacement cycles.
Public space was treated as cultural infrastructure
The High Line example in the 2010 profile places the studio’s interests in an urban setting. Public space is not only a surface treatment; it is a framework for movement, gathering, programming and institutional identity. That means design decisions must account for operations and long-term stewardship as carefully as for the initial visual effect.
Technical constraints were part of the idea
Blur illustrates the point most vividly. The fog was the visible experience, but the project’s success depended on the hidden network that produced it. In a permanent building, the equivalent network may include environmental controls, digital infrastructure, theatrical equipment or specialized lighting. The artistic premise is strongest when those systems are planned as architecture rather than appended as equipment.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the transition mattered to building design and construction
The movement from experimental projects to major commissions demonstrated that conceptual architecture can survive contact with procurement, code review, fabrication and public use. It also showed where the risks lie.
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- Translate the experience into requirements. If the design depends on mist, darkness, movement, projection or changing views, the team needs measurable environmental, structural, electrical and operational criteria.
- Coordinate specialist systems early. Atmospheric and media effects can affect mechanical loads, drainage, acoustics, fire protection, controls and maintenance access. Late coordination can force the concept to be simplified or removed.
- Protect the sequence, not just the object. A project’s meaning may depend on how people approach, enter, pause and leave. Construction decisions that preserve only the static image can undermine the intended experience.
- Plan for public operation. Cultural and civic projects must work for staff, performers, visitors, emergency responders and maintenance crews. The artistic idea has to remain legible under everyday conditions, not only at opening events.
- Keep authorship connected to delivery. The 2010 account emphasizes principal involvement. A project team should define review milestones and responsibility so design intent can be protected without blocking timely decisions.
The practice’s current frame is broader than its 2010 profile
The studio’s own current description presents DS+R as a design studio spanning architecture, urban design, installation art, multimedia performance, digital media and print. That description is consistent with the cross-disciplinary identity described by Baum, but it is a present-day institutional statement rather than evidence that every 2010 project or partnership arrangement remains the same. Portfolio statuses can change, so individual projects should be checked against the studio’s current listings when precise status matters.
Biographical framing also needs an update. The Associated Press reported that Ricardo Scofidio died in March 2025. He should therefore be identified as a deceased founding partner in any current account, and the historical phrase “Diller and Scofidio” should be clearly dated when discussing the original partnership. The studio’s continuing design vocabulary can be discussed without implying that Scofidio is still participating in present work.
How to read Diller and Scofidio’s legacy
The most useful legacy is not a signature shape. It is a way of expanding the brief. Architecture can borrow methods from theater, film, visual art and urban observation while remaining accountable to structure, systems, budgets and public use. The Blur pavilion made that proposition visible: an apparently immaterial cloud required a carefully engineered apparatus. The later commissions showed that the same insistence on experience could inform institutions and public spaces at much larger scales.
The business lesson is equally specific. Growth is not automatically success if it disconnects the people who originate the ideas from the decisions that deliver them. Baum’s account records a studio that expanded rapidly after Lincoln Center and then tried to set a size that preserved principal participation. That balance—capacity sufficient for major work, continuity sufficient to protect the concept—is the managerial problem at the center of the profile.
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