The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) has announced Elizabeth Diller as the recipient of their prestigious 2016 ACADIA Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is given to “exceptional architects and researchers who over the course of their career have made significant and innovative contributions to the fields of architecture and computational design.” The highly competitive award was last given in 2014 to the late Zaha Hadid.
Diller will receive the award at this year’s conference Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers, and Cognitive Machines, October 27-29 at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She will also deliver a keynote lecture during the conference on Friday, October 28 at University of Michigan’s Power Center for the Performing Arts.
Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary design studio that works at the intersection of architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. With Ricardo Scofidio, Diller was the first in the field of architecture to receive the “genius” award from the MacArthur Foundation, which stated “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.”
DS+R established its identity through independent, theoretical, and self-generated projects before coming to international prominence with two of the most important planning initiatives in New York: the High Line and the redesign of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts campus. In addition to the nearly completed Columbia University Graduate and Medical Education Building, and The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, Diller is Principal-in-Charge of The Shed, a new center for artistic invention at the Hudson Yards, and the renovation and expansion of MoMA, both in New York. Diller graduated from the Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1979, and taught at the school from 1981-1990. She is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.
Diller is a recipient of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Design, and the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2013, Diller was awarded the Barnard Medal of Distinction, and DS+R was presented a Centennial Medal of Honor from the American Academy in Rome. Diller was selected by Time magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
The ACADIA Board of Directors specifically cited “Liz Diller’s pioneering work at the intersections of architecture, art, technology and philosophy. Her critical explorations over many years have integrated design, computation and theory into a radically inventive and culturally relevant body of work from installations to buildings to urban landscapes.”
ACADIA President Jason Kelly Johnson said, “From the late 1980’s to today, the work of Liz Diller and her studio Diller+Scofidio (now DS+R) has been at the forefront of exploring the spatial, material and generative possibilities of new media in architecture. Their earliest experimental multi-media installations, including projects like Para-Site (1989), Slow House (1991) and Jet Lag (1998), set the stage for a substantial body of recent international built work like the Blur Building (2002) in Switzerland, the Broad (2013) museum in Los Angeles, and upcoming projects like the Museum of Image and Sound (2015-Present) currently under construction in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”
