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Scofidio, Ricardo / 120 projects

Ricardo Scofidio is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), a design studio spanning architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. Scofidio and co-founding partner, Elizabeth Diller, have been distinguished with Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture, which stated: “Diller + Scofidio have created an alternative form of architectural practice that unites design, performance, and electronic media with cultural and architectural theory and criticism. 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.”

Scofidio was partner-in-charge for two of the largest recent architecture and planning initiatives in New York City: the adaptive reuse of an obsolete, industrial rail infrastructure into the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long public park, and the transformation of Lincoln Center’s half-century-old performing arts campus. Scofidio was also involved in the design of two more recent projects significant for New York City: The Shed—a new, flexible multi-arts center—and the renovation and expansion of The Museum of Modern Art.

Additional completed projects include the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Granoff Center at Brown University, The Broad contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, and Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University’s medical campus. DS+R’s international work includes the 34-acre Zaryadye Park adjacent to the Kremlin in Moscow and the Museum of Image and Sound, under construction in Rio de Janeiro. The studio was recently selected to design the London Centre for Music, which will be the new home for the London Symphony Orchestra and the V&A.

Along with DS+R co-founding partner Elizabeth Diller, Scofidio is known for his independent cross-genre works such as the Blur Building for the Swiss Expo; Traffic, a 24-hour installation of 2,500 traffic cones at Columbus Circle; Parasite, the first installment of the MoMA’s Projects Series completed by an architectural team; the multimedia theater work The Rotary Notary and His Hot Plate; Exit at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Musings on a Glass Box at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris; and Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design at the Jewish Museum in New York.

Scofidio is a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Graham Foundation, the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is the recipient of the Smithsonian Institution's National Design Award, the American Academy in Rome Centennial Medal, The Wall Street Journal Magazine 2017 Architecture Innovator Award, and the 2019 Royal Academy Architecture Prize. He is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at The Cooper Union School, where he taught for over thirty years.

Photograph by Geordie Wood.