The City Before the Form
18:00 - 18:30
La Centrale, Nuvola Lavazza
The vision and impact of a leading figure in world architecture. From the High Line to international projects. Elizabeth Diller combines culture, technology and public space
Liz Diller comes to Turin with a pressing question: why is architecture so slow in a world that moves so fast?
Her answer lies in projects that predict the future at 30-40 years, where flexibility, care and management matter as much as form, and space adapts to programmes and communities over time.
With the High Line, DS+R has transformed a disused infrastructure into the world’s most famous elevated promenade, capable of reactivating communities, projects and imaginations along New York’s West Side. But Diller doesn’t hide the other side of success: gentrification and skyrocketing prices. “If we had foreseen it, we could have tried to impose quotas for subsidized housing. A lesson for future projects” — she said in a recent interview with Domus Italy.
The Shed sums up the idea of “architecture in motion”: the shell of the cultural centre in the Hudson Yards area flows, the space follows the programmes, designing instability as a value and making the city a stage for cultural forms in flux.DS+R has completed the Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Doha, the first contemporary religious complex designed entirely for women in the Muslim world: a place of worship, study and community that combines tradition and spatial innovation, confirming Diller’s commitment to an architecture that amplifies rights and participation.
In London, DS+R’s latest work is the Victoria & Albert Museum East Storehouse. Located in Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the building is a collection and research centre designed to open up to the public what usually remains “behind the scenes”: 250,000 objects, 350,000 books and 1,000 archives become the living subject of guided tours, workshops and programmes, making visible the conservation, care and study of the exhibits. Here, Diller’s vision expands the civic role of institutions: not just display, but access to the processes that give meaning to heritage.
At Utopian Hours, Diller will share the experience of a forty-year career, for cities that do not chase trends, but lead them. Room for designers, for places that evolve with people, for accessibility-conscious regeneration, for cultural practices that open up new possibilities for the urban future.
Elizabeth Diller is a co-founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). She led two cultural works significant to New York: The Shed and the expansion of MoMA. Diller co-created, -directed and -produced The Mile-Long Opera, an immersive choral work staged on the High Line. Most recently, DS+R completed the Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Doha, Qatar, the first purpose-built women’s mosque in the Muslim world, and the V&A East Storehouse in London, a new home for the V&A’s vast collection. Alongside her late partner Ricardo Scofidio, Diller’s cross-genre work has been twice distinguished with TIME’s "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture. She has also received the Wolf Prize in Architecture. Diller is a member of the UN Council on Urban Initiatives and a Professor of Architectural Design at Princeton University.
Photo credit: Georgie Wood
