Elizabeth Diller could be considered an accidental architect. Starting out studying for an arts degree, she took an architecture paper to better study space and culture. She enjoyed it so much she completed her degree in Architecture instead.
Even once she was in practice, (at Diller + Scofidio, with husband and business partner Ricardo Scofidio, and later Diller, Scofidio + Renfro), she did not look to undertake mainstream architectural projects. Instead, most of her early work was installation pieces – art, video, electronic. As Diller went into practice, she also started lecturing at Princeton University. Learning and research are very important at Diller’s firm. Every project has a vast amount of research backing up the design ideas. Some works are research projects that have later produced designs. Diller does not prescribe to the modern design theory of “I was inspired by…”. Every design is well thought out and backed up with information.
Despite her understated start in the architectural world, genius does not go unnoticed. Diller and Scofidio were joint winners of the first McArthur grant awarded to architects. Diller was capable of undertaking extensive research and innovative, experimental projects due to the monetary freedom gifted by her joint win. They took one semester off from lecturing every year for five years to work full time at their practice. This is when they started to work on some bigger, built projects (like the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston).
Diller’s works all look at the innovative use of space, cultural and societal influences and some shift of context. Whether this shift is like in the Blur Building, where water creates the space instead of being the element to be contained or built against; or the shift is in a stair detail, where the stairs are cut down instead of pushed up, there is always a contextual shift. Culture, space, movement, context, media.
