Art and Architecture: Barry Bergdoll, Liz Diller, Ric Scofidio, Charles Renfro - Lincoln Center Inside Out - Architectural Explorations in Books Series Event

April 9, 2013

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FREE - South Court Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Join partners Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro along with Barry Bergdoll MoMa's Chief Curator of architecture and design, to discuss the redesign of Lincoln Center, one of the most challenging and innovative civic projects in recent urban history. Other projects, including the High Line, are also addressed.

 Iwan BaanLincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, Hypar Pavilion. Photo: Iwan Baan

Over the past eight years, the interdisciplinary design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) transformed the fifty-year-old modernist citadel into a porous and democratic campus. The new monograph Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account is the first comprehensive document to feature the extensive redevelopment in its entirety. Through a combination of photographs, drawings, renderings, archival records, texts and interviews the book describes the innovative strategies that have dissolved the public/private divide and effectively turned the campus inside out, extending the spectacle of the performance halls into the Center’s mute public spaces and surrounding streets. Lincoln Center Inside Out, conceived as a cross between an art book, a scholarly record and an architectural diary, is comprised entirely of gatefolds. The book is a series of inside out spreads, in which the exterior pages of each feature large-format photographs by Iwan Baan and Matthew Monteith, among other acclaimed photographers. Tucked behind these lush photos, is a series of “back stories” that reveal the evolution and unexpected afterlife of the same spaces. The book can therefore be read in two ways as a photo essay documenting the construction process and the completed campus, or as a collection of rich and experimental ephemera.

Copies of, Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account (Damiani), are available for purchase and signing at the event after audience Q&A.

 Iwan BaanLincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, Alice Tully Hall. Photo: Iwan Baan

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is a multi-disciplinary design firm that spans the fields of architecture, urban planning, landscape design, visual arts, performing arts, digital works and print media. DS+R was founded in 1979 by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio; Charles Renfro became a partner in 2004. The three partners work collaboratively with a creative team of architects, artists and administrators.

The studio’s international body of work includes the redesign of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, including the redesign of Alice Tully Hall, the renovation and expansion of The Juilliard School, the Hypar Pavilion Lawn and Restaurant, and the expansion of the School of American Ballet; the High Line in New York City; the Institute of Contemporary Art on Boston’s waterfront; and Blur, built on Lake Neuchâtel for the 2002 Swiss Expo. Projects currently in design include: the Broad Art Museum in downtown Los Angeles; the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; the Columbia University Business School; the Museum of Image & Sound on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the Hirshhorn Museum “Bubble” in Washington D.C. 

 Matthew MontiethLincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, Juilliard Windows. Photo: Matthew Montieth

In recognition of the studio’s commitment to integrating art and architecture with issues of contemporary culture, the MacArthur Foundation presented Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio with the ‘genius’ award, the first given in the category of architecture. They were recently made fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects and were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other prestigious awards received by DS+R include the National Design Award from the Smithsonian, the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, an Obie for an off-Broadway theater production, the AIA President’s Award, and the AIA Medal of Honor.  

Barry Bergdoll is a Professor of architectural history in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Professor Bergdoll's broad interests center on modern architectural history, with a particular emphasis on France and Germany between 1750 and 1900. Trained in art history rather than architecture, he has an approach most closely allied with cultural history and the history and sociology of professions. He has studied questions of the politics of cultural representation in architecture, the larger ideological content of nineteenth-century architectural theory, and the changing role of both architecture as a profession and architecture as a cultural product in nineteenth-century European society. Bergdoll's interests also include the intersections of architecture and new technologies—and eventually cultures—of representations in the modern period, especially photography and film. He has worked on several film productions about architecture, in addition to curating a number of architectural exhibitions concerned with the history and problematics of exhibiting architecture, and the history of museological practices in relationship to architecture.

 Iwan BaanLincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account, Fashion Week. Photo: Iwan Baan

In its fifth year Architectural Explorations in Books, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture publications play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.