Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Architecture after Images
In "Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images", Edward Dimendberg offers the first comprehensive treatment of one of the most imaginative contemporary design studios. Since founding their practice in 1979, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio have integrated architecture, urban design, media art, and the performing arts in a dazzling array of projects, which include performances, art installations, and books, in addition to buildings and public spaces. At the center of this work is a fascination with vision and a commitment to questioning the certainty and security long associated with architecture. Dimendberg provides an extensive overview of these concerns and the history of the studio, revealing how principals Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro continue to expand the definition of architecture, question the nature of space and vision in contemporary culture, and produce work that is endlessly surprising and rewarding, from New York's High Line to "Blur", an artificial cloud, and "Facsimile", a video screen that moves around a building facade. Dimendberg also explores the relation of work by DS+R to that by earlier modernists such as Marcel Duchamp and John Hejduk. He reveals how the fascination of the architects with evolving forms of media, technology, and building materials has produced works that unsettle distinctions among architecture and other media. Based on interviews with the architects, their clients, and collaborators as well as unprecedented access to unpublished documents, sketchbook entries, and archival records, "Diller Scofidio + Renfro" is the most thorough consideration of DS+R in any language. Illustrated with many previously unpublished renderings in addition to photos from significant contemporary photographers, this book is an essential study of one of the most significant and creative architecture and design studios working today.
About the Author
Edward Dimendberg is professor of film and media studies, visual studies, and European languages and studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of "Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity", co-editor of "The Weimar Republic Sourcebook", and the principal of Dimendberg Consulting LLC.
Reviews
"Diller Scofidio + Renfro have emerged over the last decade as one of the most consistently innovative and daring architectural firms in the world. Their architecture defies easy categorization and can be as ephemeral as a cloud or as substantive as solid mass. Throughout their practice, though, they have been interested in cinematic effects and Edward Dimendberg's thoughtful and compellingly written 'Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images' explores in detail this aspect of their work and much more" – Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art
"Ed Dimendberg is a masterful guide for a pilgrim's journey through the complex landscape created by one of the most provocative architectural partnerships of our time. Like Diller Scofidio + Renfro, he makes you see and feel built forms in a new way, shaped by an intelligence and sensuality informed by film history, postmodern theory, and digital technology" – Sharon Zukin, author of "Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places"
"With sympathy, precision, and insight, Edward Dimendberg elegantly maps the topography of the practice – and practices – of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Their work – at once lush and austere, theatric and theoretical – is a singular exploration of architecture's expanding field, in which the scrupulously affective meets the pleasure principle with uncanny results for both art and use. This is a project of pioneering intelligence, engagement, authenticity, urbanity, and form" – Michael Sorkin, author of "All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities"
