← The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
Elizabeth Diller: Pushing the Creative Boundaries in Architecture
01:25:52
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- [00:00]
Liz Diller
The priorities have changed a bit, you know, for students. Students don't really understand well why it's so necessary to think about the discipline itself, how you put things together, how you build aesthetics of architecture. You know, what I try to do is connect up all the dots, you know, that there's nothing of their concerns that should be forgotten. And it's all very important, but not at the expense of thinking about how it all ties into our discipline, what we can do about it, our expertise.
- [00:35]
Dan Rubenstein
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years and this is my personalized guided tour to the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a well lived life. And welcome to the first episode of season 12. We have a fantastic series of weekly episodes planned, so make sure you stay up to date by signing up for our newsletter, the Grand Tourist Curator at the link in my bio on Instagram hegrandtourist podcast or@thegrandtourist.net and now let's get started. With everything going on in the world today, you'd be forgiven if you can't remember a time when something like architecture seemed like a vital element in our everyday lives and a true marker of progress. And in New York, it can seem like a miracle for just about anything to be completed, much less something of importance. It takes a bit more than just a solid understanding of good design to be a successful architect in the field here. But to rise to the level of success that the firm Diller, Scofidio and Renfro has, well, it takes a lot more. A deafness with city politics, a zest for innovation and bold ideas, and perhaps most importantly, a special knack for creative thinking on par with the greatest artists. With their new double volume monograph titled Architecture Not Architecture, published by Fiden, the powerhouse firm gives two sides of their practice equal weight. They're hugely influential built works that include Manhattan's High Line, Alice Tully hall, the Juilliard School, the renovation of the MoMA Museum, all in one volume. And then in the other there are more artistic works, including set design, site specific installations, video works, and even a cocktail dress made from raw meats. More on that later. At the center of this staggering output of creativity and design is our guest today, Liz Diller, one of the firm's co founders and preeminent thinkers, practitioners and educators in the field. Diller's early life began as an immigrant to the United States from Poland escaping post war anti Semitism, followed by an improbable love story in her college years where she met her future husband and firm partner Ricardo Scofidio. And would it surprise you to learn that Diller first toyed with a career in photography before architecture? I caught up with Liz Diller from her studio in New York to discuss what meeting her 16 year old self today would be like. The tricky romance that changed her life, her firm's first big project, lessons in the transformative power of architecture and more. What was your earliest memory of life that you can kind of go back to? Was it life before you moved to New York? Do you have any glimpses of that in your, in your deep memory?
- [03:24]
Liz Diller
Early life was a bit of a blur. I remember one very distinct episode. The family. There was a caretaker, nanny person in the apartment house and she was braiding my hair and she had just plucked a chicken and so I remember the scent of chicken feathers in my hair. It was really disgusting. And of all the memories, it's a scent memory and it's a very vivid, you know, involves sounds of chickens and smells of chickens and long. And I had long braids. So that's kind of about it. My family immigrated to the United States by boat and then we settled here in the Bronx and then Manhattan. And quite frankly there was kind of a big black hole really in my memory until maybe the age of 8 or so. And it probably has to do with going from a first language to a second language without. My parents didn't know the second language and it was very difficult for me at school because I really didn't understand anything and I was trying to absorb.
- [04:54]
Dan Rubenstein
And did you come over around? I think it was. You were on six or seven?
- [04:58]
Liz Diller
I was around, yeah, between five and six. So I wasn't quite reading in my. At that point. You weren't, you weren't necessarily reading at the age of five? You know, my parents were quite preoccupied with, with, with all that was going on and trying to leave the country. And so I, there was a time that, that I, you know, there was very little sort of learning in a typical way in this kind of schoolroom, you know, story and reading books and things like that. So as everyone was getting settled and just finding work and a family moving really with very, very little stuff that we brought and trying to create a new life. It was probably pretty painful for my parents. So. And I remember very little of those times.
- [05:54]
Dan Rubenstein
And what did your parents do or what was your father's sort of profession? If you can explain that.
- [05:59]
Liz Diller
My father ran a textile factory in Poland. And he was kind of a capitalist and he wasn't, he was a little bit frowned upon. And as a Jew, you know, there was, it was always. Poland was always anti Semitic before the war, after the war. And I grew up very secular, you know, so it was the culture of, you know, of Judaism and of being in a Jewish European family was always part of my upbringing. But from the religious part of it. No, not really. So he was, you know, he was, we were very comfortable, let's put it this way, in Poland after the war. But the problem was because of being Jews, you know, and not, not ever being able to sort of, you know, put that away, you know, it had to be pretty undercover. In fact, I was named. My brother and I were named Christian names, you know, so that we would never be subject to, you know, what happened with the Holocaust. So my, so while my father was, you know, while we were well off sort of cafe society, my father was thrown in jail here and there. And they wanted to get out. And we were able to get an exit visa. Finally. We were sponsored by my father's brother who was in New York. And so you had to be sponsored at that time to be able to get a visa. And so we were able to leave, but we had to leave everything behind, like literally, you know, all resources, monetary, also, you know, things of value. So my, my parents moved with next to nothing. We moved into an apartment building a walk up and my father took a job shelving groceries. And then he worked his way up to being a manager of a hotel. So that was kind of his trajectory. My mom, you know, to make money was cleaning office buildings. She, you know, really. They gave up a life of comfort, you know, to come and start a life, you know, really from nothing. And then she, in the end was, you know, became bookkeeper and then, you know, housewife. And she was able to sort of balance having a household with two kids and doing some work on the side later on.
- [08:46]
Dan Rubenstein
And fast forward into your life in New York. I mean, if we can go back in time and meet a 16 year old Liz Diller. How would you describe that person? What did she do for fun?
- [08:57]
Liz Diller
So 16 year old. I was totally anxious and I was very self aware. I was the high school of music and Art, which was at that time ware City College is. And I lived all the way uptown Manhattan. I was very much entrenched in being in a high school, in a college. Right. So there were a lot of folks around me and it was in Harlem, you know, so it was very Sort of New York with layers of New York, sort of very present. And so we were constantly being liberated by protests. I remember there's a lot of pot on the scene. I was extremely interested in being an artist. You know, I didn't know exactly in what direction. I was interested in photography and film and I was very close friends with a lot of musicians in the school. And, you know, it's also a blur for me what happened. But it's a different reason for a blur because I think in those days there was a lot of unrest happening. And also metabolisms were such at 16, interested in different things other than studies. So I wasn't the best student. But I was totally absorbed in the cultural part, being in the school and being exposed to many things.
- [10:36]
Dan Rubenstein
And I believe you studied art before architecture, correct?
- [10:40]
Liz Diller
Well, after I left High School of Music and Art, it left. It merged with High School Performing Arts and became Martin Luther King Jr. High School. And it's different because at the time it was a unique specialty school. High School for Performing Arts was a unique specialty school. There were science schools for science and so forth. So you kind of felt like the program, the curriculum was really shaped around the interests of kids at that age. So I was very motivated to continue on an art path. I applied for various colleges and my parents weren't in any shape to send me away. So from my choices of living at home, I tried to get into NYU and Pratt, and I didn't want to try to get into Cooper. Even though Cooper was a kind of dream school for me. I didn't think that I could get in. And so I didn't try. I got into Pratt and nyu and I chose to go to NYU for unknown reasons. And when I was there, I absolutely misread the school and I wasn't able to really be exposed. Art was really art education. This was before there were people that were advising, you know, that there were professionals advising high school students about what to do. And parents started to think about college, you know, from when kids were 6 years old. So this. I was really on my own. I made some mistakes. In the end, I became more and more attracted to Cooper Union. And I started to sneak in to Cooper and I started to. Walking into class, I was just exactly pretending I was a student. I thought I would never get in, but I wanted to learn photography. At the same time, I failed all my courses at nyu, because I didn't. I never went. So I never got any credits. But I, at some point in time, I think after a year, went by I was invited by the head of photography at Cooper to meet him to have an interview. And I went to the interview and he said, would you be interested in coming to the school? I saw your photos in your high school yearbook, and they're really great and you should really come to the school. And I said to him, you know, I've been here for the past year. I thought I would impress him. And he threw me out the door. And so I. But I was emboldened to somehow, you know, to apply the normal way. And I got in and then I chose an art path and architecture never entered into my mind ever, ever, ever. My parents, meanwhile, never saw what I could, you know, how a career, an art could, Could. Could help me be independent. And. And my parents were very professionally oriented for their kids, so they. My mom gave me a choice of, well, I should try somehow put my creative efforts into a profession like architecture, and if not architecture, dentistry. So, you know, I could never get that association out of my brain that those two were linked in some way. And I was totally not interested in either.
- [14:21]
Dan Rubenstein
Both can be painful.
- [14:22]
Liz Diller
Yeah, very painful. Right. And so I continued on the art path and I was. Actually, Cooper was great at the time. I was learning a lot, but I was also sneaking out of the school and I was. The downtown art scene was. Was happening, and I was super interested in performance. I was interested in, you know, what people were doing across disciplines. And so, you know, it became as much of a learning experience for me as the school. So I was half in, half out. And then I decided to take an architecture class. I met a guy in the architecture school who became my boyfriend and. And he sort of pushed me into taking a course here or there. And I did. And I started to really appreciate architecture as a kind of cultural investigation. So, you know, before I knew it, I got more friends in the architecture school. And then I met the dean of the school, John Hejduk, who was this mysterious cult figure. And I was so intrigued by him that I decided to just change my major. And so I went into the architecture school. I had to more or less start again. And it's a five year program and that was it. Never with the intention of becoming an architect, but just I was very drawn to a kind of critical way of thinking, to presenting my work and being accountable for what it meant. It was just everything that the art school wasn't. It was, you know, it didn't give you, like, totally free rein. It gave you some guardrails, which I appreciated. And so I went through the program and it was time for graduation and I invited my parents to the graduation. I never told them I was graduating with an architecture degree. And you know, they found out just at graduation. I somehow I could not give them really.
- [16:38]
Dan Rubenstein
They didn't, they never found out until literally you graduated.
- [16:42]
Liz Diller
Until I got right. And it was a five year program, so I had to, you know, have all sorts of excuses. But it was a free school, so it didn't, you know, torment them too much. But they must have been thrilled. No, they were thrilled. They were really thrilled. But, you know, I just somehow, I don't know what it was. I just couldn't give them the satisfaction of giving in. But I also didn't give them, I don't want to give them false hopes that I would be an architect. You know, I just was graduating with an architecture degree. And then, you know, things started to change and one thing led to another. Art projects and architecture projects together, you know, interesting exchanges between the two. And then, you know, that's how our career was formed.
- [17:29]
Dan Rubenstein
What was your photography like?
- [17:32]
Liz Diller
There was a. There were different periods of photography. There was a kind of a very abstract period where I was photographing things that were totally unrecognizable. And then there was a kind of chemistry period, you know, where I was flirting around with all the chemicals and trying to see what materially I could produce with light and various chemistries without actually exposing film the traditional way or sometimes, you know, layering on different ways of making light. So I was, I was experimenting across media. I didn't feel like I could be good at it. But once I started to, you know, think in 3D, then photography, film, time based media, all of that just started to become more and more intriguing because I let something in that was just like weirdly left out of my consciousness. And you know, I also had this sort of preconception that one had to be good in math and physics, you know, architecture school. And actually that's not true. You know, you could be a dreamer, you could be a poet, you could be, you know, you could really come from any angle. And architecture is a kind of, it's collaborative art form where the expertise comes in as you need it, so you don't have to know everything and be able to do everything.
- [19:06]
Dan Rubenstein
And at what point after graduation, I believe you may have met your husband like there and Ricardo. And how does that kind of the sort of the practice kind of come together?
- [19:16]
Liz Diller
Well, I actually met Rick when I was in school and he was my teacher.
- [19:21]
Dan Rubenstein
Is he the boyfriend you mentioned before.
- [19:24]
Liz Diller
I had a boyfriend. Well, you know, actually it was an interesting story. When I was in my first year doing classes, first year, my boyfriend, who was already in the third year, I somehow was in an elevator with Rick and Dan, my boyfriend. And Dan introduced me to Rick as his former teacher. And, you know, and then Rick said hello and shook my hand and then went off. And Dan said to me, you're going to end up with him one day. That was very strange. And I thought, what are you talking about? And somehow he had this sense that we were very similar, you know. Anyway, when I went through, you know, the various year by year at Cooper, in my second year, I had Rick and he taught the second year. And it wasn't until the end of the year that I started to think about, wow, this guy is kind of cute. And, you know, he's married and he's off limits. But, you know, I had an eye on him. You know, he had an eye on me too. And apparently his marriage was not so happy. After I was out of the class, on my way to the next, my next level at Cooper, we started a romance. And then it was complicated for several years after. At one point, I remember we were totally undercover. It wasn't like it is today, where everybody's very hypersensitive about this. But in our case, it was just a mutual attraction. And he was my professor. We didn't want to make it known because we thought that seemed kind of inappropriate at the time while I was still enrolled as a student for people to know and his marriage was still quite entangled. At one point we said to each other, we really need to tell the dean, because if this were to come out in another way, it would be probably not very bad for us. So we went to the dean together and we said, while I think I was in the fourth year at that time, that we're a couple. And he said, that's great. You're two people that I love and you're meant for each other. And that was like. It was so comforting. And then we came out basically as a couple. And it wasn't until I graduated after the fifth year that we were already living together and we began to start a small practice. Now, Rick was already. He was. He's 19 years older than me. He already had a practice, a small practice with several other partners, which he was really unhappy with. And he felt that he wasn't. He really wasn't that interested in taking the professional route and much more interested in where I wanted to go, which is sort of in, in this interdisciplinary work with space as one of the major component parts. And we started to take on some invitations from Creative Time and Artist Space and so forth to do things out in the public realm. And this was kind of the beginning of things. We also had some projects, some work that he was still connected to that we started to do together, like the Kinney House, which was one of our very first things that we did together. And slowly started to see that it's possible to have a practice that merged architecture and some independent work whose agendas we would, we would identify. You know, it wasn't just solve problem solving for others.
- [23:32]
Dan Rubenstein
And to the totally uninitiated, how, how is your firm sort of set up today in terms of the four partners? If you kind of met someone and said I know nothing about your firm at all and you can just sort of describe it.
- [23:47]
Liz Diller
So we are a firm of over 100 architects, artists and administrators. There are four partners, there are two founding partners, Ricardo and myself. And Charles Renfro joined at some point, I think around 2000. And then Ben Gilmartin joined a little bit later on after being in the studio and contributing to the studio for many years. We're organized in, I would say a very fluid way. Even though there are titles and categories for architects in the studio, the teams for projects are very much across different skill levels and experience levels. And so we try to make kind of interdisciplinary groups. We're also so this, we're doing large scale building projects, sometimes master plans. Very often we work in different parts of the world at the same time. We're doing self initiated projects and also invited independent projects which are to curate a show, or to design an exhibition, or to participate in a public art project, or you know, just simply invited by a museum to do something, you know, to contribute something. And that has gone in different directions from media, robotics, working with an environment, you know, and so forth. So we do different things depending on interests at the time. And we always follow our curiosity and the set of opportunities that unfolds. So it's fairly fluid. We don't have like a trajectory and a mission at the end to become bigger and more powerful. Not at all. We kind of like the size that we are. We know everybody's name. We work in groups that are constantly changing. The partners are involved pretty much in every project together. So it's very old fashioned in a way. And there's a lot of different opinions. You know, sometimes those, you know, the smartest idea wins, sometimes it comes from a partner. Sometimes it comes from an intern. And, you know, we have lots of fights, you know, and people get bloodied and you know, then we. Someone wins, you know, and then it's like, well, you know, but usually based on merit, you know, and not on hierarchy. So, you know, I kind of. It's not like any other studio. It's not structured in a formal way. And sometimes that's very disorienting for people. But, you know, it's kind of the way we like.
- [26:52]
Dan Rubenstein
And you know, one of the early projects in the book is the Kinney house. The plywood house. Yes. Okay. So yeah, one of those early projects is that Kinney house, also known as the plywood House in 81. And it's one of the. It's a. A project that opens one of the volumes of the book, which it looks like it was built for $45,000 from a. With funds from an insurance settlement. Something burned down, they got the insurance, and then you guys were able to kind of rebuild with that limited budget on that site.
- [27:21]
Liz Diller
Tell me about the foundation.
- [27:23]
Dan Rubenstein
Actually, I'm literally. Oh, okay. Tell me about. You know, when you. Now when you look back and you're putting this book together and you're looking at this house, like, can you look at it and recognize the sort of Dolores Scofido Renfro DNA in it?
- [27:37]
Liz Diller
Absolutely. That's one of the eye opening things about doing this monograph is I never put it all together. You know, you just don't see a trajectory except from a historical point of view. If somebody writes a book on you, then you know, it's their take on your work. But when you do a book like this and you start to see the trajectory of ideas and how those ideas were woven together somehow unconsciously, because there were always agendas, there was always new inputs, new realizations. So it all folded together and increased in scale and permanence and so forth, even though independent work was never, ever put aside. But that kidney house took on a kind of salt box, you know, house like something that was fairly generic, worked with generic materials like 4x8 plywood panels, and found this kind of dissonance between, you know, the layout of the house and the module of the. Of the building material. And that that discrepancy was what sort of created the uniqueness of the house. So where the plan and the section met the skin was a way of showing distraction, disturbance and something that would sort of pull you in because it was a challenge to the convention.
- [29:19]
Dan Rubenstein
And, you know, the book outlines dozens of projects, both realized and not and I would say, like all design and architecture fans, love learning about what might have been. Right. The sort of speculative kind of alternate history. Is there a project that you put in the book because you were putting everything together and thought like, oh gosh, I really wish that one had worked out. It still stings that it like you did it. And it.
- [29:44]
Liz Diller
If we put into the book all the projects that were not executed, it would be a 20 volume book, it wouldn't be a two volume book. So we were very spare in the projects we chose to show that didn't see the light of day. And I think among them maybe two stand out. Maybe the Slow House, which was the first project where we became convinced that it's possible to be an architect, do an architectural project with an idea. Because we were sort of turned off to the profession and thought it was, you know, morally corrupt and you know, it was. And it was just bankrupt intellectually. That's what we felt, you know. But when we or had this opportunity to do it and then we got on the COVID of magazines and the project was, you know, they asked for it to the permanent collection of MoMA and other places like that, we realized, wow, this idea is really appreciated. Unfortunately, it was the victim of the art market collapse at the time and it was the value of two site twombolies that the client was going to be selling. So it had to stop while the foundations were already in the ground. So it was mid construction and many of the pieces prefabricated and then it had to stop. So that was heartbreaking. But it was still recognized as an important project in 1990.
- [31:31]
Dan Rubenstein
And tell me about the house itself. Like what about the. Can you describe it for those who have seen a photo of it? Like it.
- [31:39]
Liz Diller
Yeah, it took on. Let's see how I could describe it. The panelization was only customized where there was a core or something that really didn't fit into the module here. So the module of the plywood was disturbed. There was basically half the house was a two story double height space and half of it was two stacked stories. So that was also celebrated in a way. And where windows that were sort of typically on a rhythm were, let's say hidden by a closet or a stair. It became plugged like a blind window.
- [32:29]
Dan Rubenstein
And of all the projects you've done, obviously, you know, the High Line is of course one of the most pivotal on a variety of levels. And of course it's in the book. It's funny to see it now as a plan and not the sort of State the sort of spine that runs through Manhattan today. Can you share the origin story of this project that was so unique at the time and now so widely copied, and everyone started doing their own kind of version of this. Tell me about that story and how do you think it, why you think it was a success in the way that you executed it?
- [33:07]
Liz Diller
So the west side of Manhattan in the meatpacking district and Chelsea was extremely run down. And there was a point at which, you know, a lot of the industrial and warehouse needs of the city was actually moving out of the city. And, you know, it was trucking. You know, ultimately that changed a lot of things. And it was less expensive for some of these industrial areas to be, you know, someplace other than New York. And so the High Line was abandoned in 1981, and it was the source of distribution for the meatpacking plant before that. So when, you know, highway system, you know, trucking took over all of that. You know, there was less and less need. So the Highland was abandoned. And at some point in time, there was a piece cut off of it from the south. And the property owners around the High Line had been lobbying to demolish it for a long time because they felt it devalued their properties. And so if you think about, you know, it was quite long at that point from Gansevoort all the way to 34th Street, a lot of properties to the east and west and across that mile and a half almost. So Giuliani was in office at the time. And Giuliani decided as his last act as mayor, he would sign a court order to demolish the High Line. At the same time, citizen activists, really young guys that just found themselves at community meetings, thought that it was really cool and that there was all this growth on the High Line that happened by chance in. It was just air blown, self seeded seeds from the train cars sort of landing in the ballast. And the site was just very wild and weird. It was also illicit. So people came up there, snuck up there to shoot up, have sex, throw out their furniture. I mean, it was kind of a wreck of a site, but it was also, there was this incredible growth on the side of what we would call weeds, but there weren't. They were really like plants and vegetation. It was really interesting. So it was just at that moment when the Bloomberg administration was coming in and Giuliani was leaving, that the Bloomberg administration was convinced at least to hold off on the demolition and ultimately to reverse the court order. Amanda Burden was involved at the time, and she was the city planning Commissioner. And she believed. And this is Robbie Hammond and Joshua David, who are the two citizen activists, you know, young guys that were, you know, just felt like, what if this could be turned into a park? So it was their initiative that brought the city there. And, you know, this was compounded by the fact that there were no parks in this part of the city. And it was really, you know, also a place that needed to be transformed into something. You know, there was a kind of economic growth issue there because it was burnt out. There's a lot of sex trade and drug trade also happening there. And the incoming mayor saw it as an opportunity for economic growth. So this, you know, anything good that happens for the public always happens when somebody makes money, you know. And so the way that this site was argued, because no one could believe that there could be a park in the air there, you know, who would go and what, what would it be? It was sort of argued in the same way that Frederick Law Olmsted argued Central park, that this is a place a park could bring a kind of, could be a catalyst for economic growth. People would come around the park. Except this wasn't Central Park. It was a linear park on an industrial rail line. And so nobody believed that could happen. There was, there was an ideas competition first that was mostly, you know, students participated and, you know, put forward some kind of crazy ideas. And then there was a formal competition. And we were invited into that formal competition with. And we were on a team with James Corner at the time and Pete Udolph. And it was basically open ended. How could you make this into a park, you know, into a public asset? And when. And the competition was formidable and when we presented, we sort of had a feeling of the vibe of the, of this, of the space and what could be done. And I'm going to quote Rick here where he said, you know, it. What an architect needs to do here is protect the site from architecture. And he was like. That was like one of the key things, one of the key ideas, because, you know, if it was successful, you know, and you don't want to do too much, you know, it's kind of beautiful as it is, but you have to basically clean it out, you have to replant it, you have to figure out a new way of getting up and down and you have to figure out what the features could be and how the paving could be and what the language would be of the whole thing and so forth. So there was a lot of design to do, but you just didn't want to put a Lot of hard stuff on it. That wasn't the idea. And then you wanted to protect it in the end from the encroachment of architecture that could come around it if it was successful. So the city also in the zoning and the rezoning of the site, put in some, you know, some rules around being able to do setbacks and no connection with a high line for any buildings that would be built there, so forth. So, you know, the city was very open to trying something out and we were selected for this. I think we touched a nerve, you know, that it was well designed, you know, and it was a thoughtful proposal. And one of the things that I was told later, you know, actually this year, that one of the things that charmed the selection committee was that when we presented, we didn't all agree our, our group as presenters, we argued with each other as we were making a presentation. Everybody else was very slick, you know, they knew exactly what they were doing. We were sort of trying to figure it out and, and I think that resonated a lot because, you know, the team, the client team, the city, city planning and, and we were all doing this for the first time. We brought them to the Promenade Plante in Paris, which was the only other piece of infrastructure viaduct in Paris that had been turned into a park. No one knows about it, you know, and it's not really used except by people that live right near there. And it's very French and it doesn't really feel like it's celebrating the fact that it was infrastructure and had a past. In our case, we said this has to be explicitly New York. It has to provide new ways of seeing New York, understanding New York, being able to reinvent the Promenade but without, you know, having to stop for red lights, you know, and, and also the sort of prospect of a park where you can't do anything, you know, you can't really bring your dog, you can't ride a bike, can't bring your rollerblades, you can't throw frisbees, you really basically can sit or walk, you know, and I think that was also the trick, you know, like it's a very old fashioned idea, but doing nothing was like, you know, a discovery for New Yorkers. And we even made a special place, you know, with a sunken overlook over 10th Avenue to just look at the taillights of cars going up 10th Avenue. And it was really didn't do anything there except kind of look into what could be like a fireplace or you know, is something that was totally non dramatic. But this sort of feel of New York, this sort of, you know, mesmerizing sense of the continuity of things. And, you know, we succeeded in a way that we never could have predicted. It grew in pieces, sort of like sausage links. Whenever the city and private philanthropy could afford the next part and were convinced that it was successful, we continued to build northward. And at some point, even in 2009, you know, when the first section opened, it was already an incredible success. People went up and there were. They had never seen anything like that before. It continued to lead to more growth and more success. And then all of a sudden, the property values started to.
- [43:17]
Dan Rubenstein
Well, it became sort of the spark that lit a sort of succession of years of starchitects building condos on the High Line. It's one of Zaha's last buildings, you know, and on and on. It was kind of wasn't just the success unto itself. It also kind of spurred all of this growth.
- [43:42]
Liz Diller
Well, you know, what was initially thought of as an eyesore, the Highland that needed to be demolished was now seen as an asset that escalated property values that kept, you know, getting, you know, traded. And, you know, it flipped. And then. Yes, and then, you know, this building started to grow out of the ground and started to crowd, actually, the Highlands. It was very good that it had these setbacks that were already foreseen, But I don't think anyone could have imagined that, you know, when we predicted maybe that there would be 400,000 people a year that would visit, you know, that would be a really good goal. That before COVID hit, there were 8 million people annually, and now that's pretty much restored. And so not only that, but, you know, it became like the hottest tourist attraction. So everybody that visited New York had to go to the High Line. And, you know, sometimes it became overcrowded, you know, so that wasn't totally great. But what I thought was really, you know, a terrific outcome outside of this asset that had made for New York and allowed it to grow, you know, into the west, where there was, you know, the west was just full of infrastructure and left abandoned, really, by the city. So it allowed it to grow. Maybe not all in the best way. I'll come back to that. But what was really satisfying was that it ignited a kind of viral effect all over the world where city makers, you know, would, you know, all of a sudden value potentially their highways or infrastructure that was no longer working, and rather than tear it down, maybe figure out if they could produce a kind of High Line effect of their own, which meant both sort of catalytic growth, but also like great plays for a great public space and a great park. So there are high lines that were popping up all over the world, whether on highways and bridges, train trestles, just aqueducts, viaducts, everywhere. And we weren't very proud of the fact that we were able to prove out, whereas the promenade plantate didn't do it was very singular and really no one knew about it. That some somehow the High Line became world renowned. And it is our most known project. Everyone seems to know the High Line. Wherever we go in the world, they know it. And I think it proved that even though we're wedded to our screens and we think that public space is over, it's actually not. People love seeing each other, you know, being together. Like the city is very much alive and it means something to have public space. So we're very proud of, you know, of, of that accomplishment. So both on the, you know, limited resources front reuse, adaptive reuse of infrastructure, 1, 2, public space is still very much alive.
- [47:24]
Dan Rubenstein
In 2018, you conceived of a mile long opera on the High Line and tell me a little bit about what that was and how it sort of fits into your thinking of what the High Line is for.
- [47:36]
Liz Diller
Yes. So over time, the success of the High Line was very clear to everyone and it made us question what success really looked like. And when people complained that it was too crowded or that they were driven out of, you know, artists were driven out of their cheap apartments in the area, or, you know, for new condos that were being built, or people that lived in the neighborhood, in the projects, you know, no longer had a place to shop, you know, because there were now fancy cafes everywhere. The speedy gentrification was really something to think hard about. A lot of things went right, but not everything went right. And we should have speculated about another future where the city could grow proportionately there and you could have low middle income social housing as well as condos. And that 1% issue. So it brought us, brought me specifically to a thought that I wanted to do something using the High Line. I wanted to make the High Line a site, but to do an intervention there that would be a performance. And I've always wanted to do an opera, you know, and the idea that I had was to do an opera on the High Line that dealt with the fast gentrification, this fast pace of change at the High Line. But it wouldn't only be there in New York, it would be many post industrial cities that are seeing the same thing. And so the opera would be Very big. It would be very, as operas are, you know, like big in thought and big in scale. And it would be about the winners and the losers of that growth because it was to be musical in nature. I asked David Lank was a collaborator prior to that to work with me and to write the score. And we together identified some writers that could do the lyrics. And so Ann Carson and Claudia Rankine, two poets that would work on the words. And the words were to be separated, song and spoken, song and spoken. The structure of this, and I'll just explain because it came out of this notion at the very, very beginning, rather than have an audience and performers on a stage, the whole High Line was the stage. New York was the backdrop. And so in this case, the performers would be many, many, and they would be basically strewn across the mile and a half of the High Line. And there would be a thousand performers. We decided to pick a number, a thousand, all singers, and would all be spoken or sung. And they would be selected from non professional and professional sources. So there were 750 non professional singers from churches, school choirs, church choirs, community choirs, and you know, we would make selections from those. And then there were 250 professional singers among them. And the idea was that the audience would basically promenade the entire length of the High Line from the southern point to the northernmost point and would, in their walking through, you know, individually would be eyeball to eyeball with singers. And singers would sing directly to audience members as they came along. So the audience kind of mixed down the sound as they walked. It's kind of complicated. Structurally. There were 25 musical parts. You know, they were all interconnected like pearls with spoken word. And they were all blended together one into the other. So it was like an entire event. And it took some people 45 minutes to get through it from, you know, if you race through it, some people two and a half hours to get through it. And it, I have to say it was, it was very, very hard to do. I was the creator with David and I was the producer. I knocked on doors, you know, and I got the money together to do it. And the director and I worked with a co director, Lindsay, who was, you know, worked with, with Marina Abramovic and who was an expert in endurance singing. So we had to train singers to actually be there for the duration and do a lot of repetitive singing. So this was, I don't know, it could take a day to describe this piece, but it was one of the most, I think, adventurous things that I've ever done. And I just had this will to do it. I had no idea how I. How I did it, how I managed to pull it all together. I definitely had help from experts. But I learned for the first time, you know, what. What it was to market. You know, how to get tickets, how to organize an audience, you know, how to. How to, you know, do people flow through a very skinny space, how to set up an ambulance just in case somebody has a heart attack, and at the same time, the content. So it was a very, very interesting learning experience. And now I feel like the best advice I could give to anyone is to do something you're totally unqualified to do because you do your best work.
- [54:26]
Dan Rubenstein
And the other volume of the book is called Not Architecture. And there's a 1981 art project called Traffic, where you're placing. You're taking over this roundabout in Manhattan that's sort of at the corner of Central park, and there are hundreds. It looks like traffic cones in a certain pattern. Tell me about how that. What that is, and how that kind of helped start the trajectory of the firm as it is.
- [54:53]
Liz Diller
So while I was in school at Cooper, one of the sort of great institutions uptown that gathered architects for lectures, and it was a kind of. I would say it's like New York's aa It was like a social space, but also one of education. And it was called the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. And. And this institution, and Peter Eisenman ran it, and there were many scholars and architects that were part of this and also intersected with October with an art history. And so there was a really interesting kind of intellectual core there. They had many programs, and among them was a competition to imagine a solution for Columbus Circle. And this was the time where the Coliseum that had been there was slated to be torn down, and that whole area was going to be redeveloped in some way. So it was an ideas competition, effectively. Everyone was to present an idea on a board a certain size. Anyone that wanted to participate, it was an open call. And those proposals were exhibited in a show. And there was a kind of party. And I think then and there they decided that they were going to select a winner of this competition. And. And they selected us with the cones. And everyone else took a much more sort of planning, organizational, traffic and building approach, and tried to make that traffic circle, which is an inevitability, into more of a European kind of strategy, where the buildings would sort of hug the shape of the roundabout and the plaza. And of course, there's no plaza there. It's not for Humans, it's just for cars. And that traffic circle was also cut up by traffic moving in all different directions. Broadway was diagonally going through it, and it was just a lot of bits and pieces. And it was actually hazardous to cross the street there. So our approach was very different. We just thought of, why not use a material that's indigenous to the site traffic. Traffic cones. They're bright orange. We could just make a serial arrangement of the cones and sort of bring this broken traffic circle together into more of a pure form by, you know, by situating several thousand of them at a regular interval and creating a kind of sense of, you know, snow or like the way that snow sort of connects. Unlike things after a snowfall, you just see white and doesn't matter whether it was a road or a tree or whatever. A car just covers over everything. That's what we wanted to do, that traffic circle. And it was a formal and Duchampian move. I think, at the same time, just sort of playing with the system, having kind of a bit of irony with it. And it wasn't trying to fix this permanently, but it was trying to make a one day event to appreciate the issue. But we didn't really know what the response would be. And they. People really kind of loved it and asked us if we could pull it off for a day. And so we said, oh my God, how are we going to get 2,500 traffic codes? And they were able to organize the opportunity for us to do this, which meant working with the MTA and working with other, you know, city agencies to be able to control a little bit, control the traffic during the time that we were setting the cones and to get them delivered on site. We set them all, you know, in their. We produced this. We started 4 in the morning, I think, and then worked for several hours to. And with several friends to. To get these cones organized. And then it was like this incredible day. And the cones did exactly what we thought they would do. The traffic still ran through, but it formed a kind of continuity through color and light and this kind of landscape element that united all the bits and pieces of that so called circle, traffic circle. So it was a great opportunity to do something. It was totally unexpected that we would get away with it. And then once we did, we sort of got the taste of doing things in public spaces that was really fun. It was interesting to be noticed. It was interesting to affect the way the city functions, you know, even a little bit. And that sort of gave us a taste for public art.
- [60:42]
Dan Rubenstein
Of course, I'd love to know about a single spread from the not architecture book, the meat dress.
- [60:50]
Liz Diller
So the meat dress was a response to a competition from Ms. Meatpacking District, which was held by the folks that were doing the high line and, you know, that were involved in that whole area of town. And it was largely. It was a sort of half a drag queen affair and half a just fashion affair. It was great fun. We decided to actually make a dress out of the very product that was being made on site, that had been made on site, which was basically cured bacon and salami. And we sort of came up with the idea because we wanted to do something extra architectural that would involve a way of putting materials together that didn't need mechanical fastenings. So we were using the sort of fat clinginess of lunch meats to stick to one another. And. And so we sort of produced with our staff, we had a model, and we. We produced this design, you know, on a model, sort of physically trying it on and. And seeing, you know, what worked, what worked with the gravity, what worked with her figure. And that's how it came about, and we won.
- [62:23]
Dan Rubenstein
And, you know, obviously so much of your work has. And the firm's work has left a mark in New York, and a good one, in my opinion, of course. What do you feel you've learned over time about the city of New York as a place where, you know, good architecture can happen? Because sometimes, you know, it's just like a regular Joe stand walking down the street. You know, we're constantly, like, looking at things, being like, oh, why is this? Why is that there? Like, you know, why isn't this better? Why is, you know, and you're someone who has left such a positive mark and such a good and critically received remark from a critical point of view and from an everyday tourist point of view. And what did you learn about that?
- [63:10]
Liz Diller
Thank you, Dan. First of all, because that is. It's so important to me to have, first of all, had an opportunity to work in my own city, you know, to be able to appreciate what I've done, you know, by living here. Also, I kind of see all of New York as kind of an unfinished punch list. That's the downside, you know, like all the things that need to be kept up and that were unfinished, you know, so. But when I started out, the notion of doing something in New York seemed really remote. You know, most architects don't have a chance to do. To change and shape their own cities. So, you know, the way it has typically worked in the way That I sort of, you know, maybe it was just the way I saw the world and other architects at the time that I started out. It's mostly when you're, you know, like in your 70s and 80s, when you've maybe made a name for yourself someplace else and you get back invited into your own city to do something. And sometimes it's out of pity, you know, and it's often kind of like it's too late, you know. But what happened to us, which was just a beautiful unfortunate alignment of the stars, is that just as we were sort of joining architecture, we were. It was the intersection of the Bloomberg administration, the beginning of the Bloomberg administration. It was just post 911 and there was this incredible spirit in New York of renewal. And you know, we pick ourselves up and we do something, you know, for the city. And I think a lot of people felt, you know, professionals even felt it for 9 11. You know, everybody rushed down to the site to see how they could help. You know, like there was this sense of citizenship in New York that I'd never felt before. And so when Bloomberg came in there, a lot of things became possible because the administration was full of very smart people that wanted to make a change. It wasn't bureaucratic and we had a lot of opportunities now, you know, before that. And the reason I say that it seemed not possible before was that New York is and has always been a real estate oriented city. You know, developers have run New York, made decisions about properties. They still do. You know, in a sense, not that much has changed. But during Bloomberg's administration there was also a kind of concentration of culture and education. And this sort of lack of bureaucracy made just knocking on the door possible, you know, to do something. And I think we just were the beneficiaries of being at the right place at the right time. So Lincoln center was starting just around 2003 and it was after the project was held up for a year because Frank Gehry was supposed to make a presentation right at 911 on his scheme. And everyone was trapped in New York. Apparently he made the presentation and no one wanted to do it. And it by chance it looked a little bit like a pile of rubble, you know, so it didn't help himself. But it was, you know, Frank's kind of twisted forms and you know, in the Jesse Robertson Plaza and he was making a kind of interior space. Anyway, there was a pause for a year and then there was a search for an architect to propose something. And we were by chance invited to propose something and we were among very established firms. And we were not established at all. And so we showed some very unlikely things because we thought we had nothing to lose. And by some miracle we were selected. And I think it was, you know, maybe a case of like false identity or something. Like people, they didn't really know what, what we were doing. And, and I think that some of the things we said, maybe we just caught on and, and we touched a nerve. We got an opportunity to start that project and it was almost parallel to the High Line. Bloomberg had just come in. The Friends of the High Line had, you know, just were on the other side of that demolition order that Giuliani signed into action, which was to demolish the High Line. When Bloomberg came in, there was this moment of reversal of that court order. And Friends of the High Line were able to sort of open up the discussion again. And one thing led to another and that led to, to a competition that the Friends of the High Line put together. And we were among the architects selected for that. And again, we touched a nerve. So those two projects sent us in a direction we had never expected to actually do. Large scale projects that we, Lincoln center, we didn't even expect. It just snowballed from a very small project to a bigger and bigger and bigger project over, across like 12 years. And those two projects matured us in a huge way. Our studio, we started to understand public process, you know, what's involved in doing a permanent project for the big city and a large scale project working with all the entities that one has to work with. The, not just landing a big idea, but like educating people around you. And that was, I think of it as this sort of so Thomas Edison that said something like genius is like 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. And you know, for me, especially for us as a studio, but for me especially, it was like, you know, it was exactly that 1%, you know, inspiration, you know, in terms of the ideas, 99% having meetings and a torturous process of convincing people, finding, you know, getting consensus, you know, the patience that it takes to bring people along and so forth. And then I, I had this big realization that that 99% was actually very creative. In order to actually convince anybody to do anything that's permanently rooted to the ground. It took a lot of creative energy to do that creative thought. And so that was the maturing point, that I realized how hard, hard it was to do it, but that I actually had the fortitude to do it. You know, and my studio, you know, everyone, you know, we Were. There were so many parallel projects going on for Lincoln center was not one thing. It was Alice Tully hall, while we were doing the expansion of Juilliard, while we were doing public spaces on the North Plaza, while we were doing the restaurant, you know, the high power restaurant, while we were doing South Plaza work, and then we were doing School of American Ballet. You know, each of these was an independent project with a separate team. And, you know, it was like. It was. It was crazy. It was. It was almost like our entire studio was fueled by Lincoln Central while we were doing the High Line. And that was really complicated in and of itself because no one had done anything like that before. So convincing the city, City, that was a good thing, was really difficult and crazy.
- [71:53]
Dan Rubenstein
And it sounds like you wouldn't even have time to learn a lesson about New Yorkers, just that there's this New York kind of tends to chew people up and spit them out whether or not they like it. If you can survive the spitting out, if you can survive the chewing, then I guess you're in a good place.
- [72:11]
Liz Diller
Yeah, I think that's where the post 911 helped us a bit, because there. There was this spirit, something, you know, some kind of generosity afforded people just in that period. And I think, you know, both Lincoln center and the High Line were not advertised. You know, we didn't. People didn't really know. They weren't paying attention to what happened, you know, what was happening. We were working with the local community boards and with the city, but the general public, you know, just didn't. Didn't know until the changes started happening. And they were really happy. You know, it was like a big gift because it came from nowhere.
- [72:54]
Dan Rubenstein
So we have to find the generosity, basically.
- [72:56]
Liz Diller
Yes, we do.
- [72:58]
Dan Rubenstein
Again, which is. Which is a tall order for any New Yorker, I guess. The book is sort of divided into architecture and not architecture. And do you think. I'm wondering how that plays into this next question, which is for the next decade or two of the firm. How do you want to divide those two things? Or do you have a vision for. So we had this post 9 11, pre Covid era of expansion and in New Yorker generosity and hopefulness, and now we're in a completely different space. So in various ways to, like, how do you. How do you. In your best wishes and your best hopes and dreams, like the next sort of almost 20 years of trajectory that we're going on, What. What phase would you hope for in your own.
- [73:52]
Liz Diller
You know, I never think ahead, you know, so I never have, you know, and Our studio was sort of, you know, just riding a kind of wave of good luck and being at the right place at the right time and actually going after things we're interested in. The proportion of independent work to, you know, professional work, let's say, was, you know, was roughly, you know, it was always in parallel. You know, sometimes it was more professional stuff going on, sometimes, you know, an equal amount of independent work and depends, you know, like, I was always on the independent side, but I was also doing professional work. Not all of my partners are doing the independent work. Rick is with me, and Charles does some of his own. But, you know, the studio we have carved out in our hundred misfits that come to the studio that work with us. You know, there are some that are interested in this independent work and work with us on it, and they have this sort of other gene, you know, that it takes to sort of translate some of those architectural, you know, independent thinking into architecture into independent projects, you know, but with the architectural thinking, too. I was more optimistic a month ago about, you know, how far architecture can go and all can do. I think we all have a tremendous concern about our institutions, our, you know, ability to think freely in our schools, you know, or, you know, like, can life be the same? That's the question. And I'm. I'm optimistic and I hope that we. That we can and that, you know, that. That, you know, maybe there's a silver lining someplace that if the economy changes in some way that helps architecture. I don't know, I'm trying to find a silver lining. I mean, we are committed to doing our work and we're committed to our independent work. We're committed to not changing the way we operate and. But we're going to be, you know, in the end, you know, it's the economy, it's our relationship with Europe and the rest of the world that we're very used to working with. It's, you know, it's going to be, you know, also America in the eyes of everyone outside. And, you know, we're American architects, you know, and inevitably connected with all that's the states right now. So, I don't know, maybe we can look through the politics and just continue our move forward in architecture. I think what we have to do, actually, independent of that, is reform a lot of institutions. We're working with a lot of conventions that we just launched, walk through. We haven't really thought about how our culture has changed and how the speed of change affects everything and including the speed of technological change as well. As social change and our relationship to institutions, all of that has to be rethought. You know, architecture, I say this a lot, but architecture is very slow and inert and it's very, very slow to respond to the speed of change, you know, and we're left with, you know, buildings that, you know, are very difficult to adapt. You know, having to raise everything and rebuild all the time. And, you know, in. In a time of limited resources, you know, and consciousness about the, you know, about the environment and how wasteful architecture is. You know, there are a lot of things that we have to. That we have to change the way we work and also what constitutes architecture and how buildings could be responsive in new ways. So this is something that I think about a lot, independent of, you know, who's in the White House.
- [78:51]
Dan Rubenstein
How's that going? How's that thought process going?
- [78:54]
Liz Diller
We'll see.
- [78:55]
Dan Rubenstein
Any breakthroughs?
- [78:58]
Liz Diller
You know, I think it's a big conversation. We just finished an exhibition called Restless Architecture, and it's a show at Maxi in Rome that we curated. And, and it looks at the whole 20th century and its relationship, like mostly post war and its relationship to shifting cultural issues and technologies and program changes and sort of touches on projects that were not rooted to the ground and that we're more responsive and more agile. And it's not that that's necessarily. I'm not saying that we make sheds, you know, we make more of architecture that moves or anything like that, but I think the sort of the thinking about densification of cities and how we make the most use of limited space, of, you know, how sometimes architecture has to get out of the way to survive. You know, like there are many issues and, you know, I won't bring them all up, but the show kind of touches on like multiple thematics of how architecture can become. Has become lighter or more in touch, more in sync, but it has a long way to go.
- [80:33]
Dan Rubenstein
And are you still teaching?
- [80:35]
Liz Diller
Yes.
- [80:36]
Dan Rubenstein
On top of everything, you teach as well. So in this sort of crazy age that we're in today, what do you think is the most important lesson that you think needs to be drilled into your students heads that maybe you didn't need to 10 years ago. Is there anything in this world of design where you kind of go, like, the one thing I really need to make sure that these kids understand about this profession is.
- [81:01]
Liz Diller
Well, that's a loaded question. There's a lot of stuff. First of all, I teach mostly graduate students at Princeton, and these students are somewhat entitled, they're worldly, they Come to Princeton with a sort of focus on learning architecture plus history and theory, and to be involved in a broader university. I think maybe the thing that I had to do 10 years ago that I felt was sort of critical was to teach them how to unlearn all the bad things that they thought they knew about architecture and basically to screw around with their brains and liberate some new thinking.
- [81:58]
Dan Rubenstein
What kind of bad thinking do they come into that gradual feel that they.
- [82:03]
Liz Diller
Know what architecture is about? You know, maybe they see it a little bit too professionalized. You know, they don't. You know, maybe they used to see architecture as too static, you know, so anyway, so the idea was to shake them up, destabilize them, create doubt in their brains. That was the main thing. I think after post Covid. Post George Floyd. We've gone through a lot culturally, socially, and also with climate change and political upheavals all over the world. The priorities have changed a bit, you know, for students now, and, you know, everyone is really interested and, well, everyone should be interested in environmental crisis and also in identity, issues of identity. And in a very, very good way, there's a sense of consciousness about the world around us as opposed to. To more hermetic pursuits in the discipline. And I think that one of the casualties of this new set of concerns is that design goes by the wayside. So students don't really understand why it's so necessary to think about the discipline itself, the history of the discipline, and responding to the evolution of the discipline through whatever work you do and whatever concentrations you have, which, you know, has to do with how you put things together, how you build, how you. The aesthetics of architecture, materiality. You know, look at, like, what happened in the 20th century and all the ruptures and, you know, and. And why we are, why we ended up where we ended up. All the interrelationships of other aesthetic disciplines, you know, and architecture, including literature, including art and, you know, performance and so forth. So there. There's a lot on the. On the plate. I think it's very hard for students to make out the world today and, you know, how architecture could help shape it. There's a lot of disillusionment, and I don't blame them. You know, I would be confused if I were a student today, but, you know, what I try to do is connect up all the dots, that there's nothing of their concerns that should be forgotten. And it's all very important, but not at the expense of thinking about how it all ties into our discipline, what we can do about it our expertise.
- [84:55]
Dan Rubenstein
And if you as my last question, if you had to describe your architectural point of view in three words, what words would those be?
- [85:06]
Liz Diller
Critical approach, Unapologetic. And the other one is not three words, but it's jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.
- [85:15]
Dan Rubenstein
Thank you to my guest Liz Diller, as well as to Alex Goombis from Phaidon for making this episode happen. The editor of the Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, the Grand Tourist curator@thegrandtourist.net and follow me on Instagram danrubenstein. And don't forget to follow the Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Until next time.