The Broad in Los Angeles. The Shed in New York. The Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. With her partners – Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin – Elizabeth Diller, 69, has designed some of the most unique museums of the 21st century. Born in Lodz, Poland, the son of Holocaust survivors, the architect has also been busy designing the latest look of New York City.
Diller came to the United States by boat as a child and grew up in the Bronx. She recently visited Barcelona to attend the Smart City Expo. At breakfast in a five-star hotel – she ate a roll and a soft-boiled egg with a teaspoon – she met EL PAÍS for an interview.
Ask. Would you make it to New York today like you were a kid?
Answer. No. In 1959 it was possible to start a new life in the Bronx. [But today], who could pay the rent? Most of the artists have since disappeared.
Q What do cities lose when they lose their artists?
TO. Someone who tells you the truth. When we made the shed [a cultural center in Hudson Yards] With the Rockwell Group we wanted to revisit the idea of New York as a center of cultural production – and not as a place where time has stood still.
Q. Did you take unnecessary risks in building The Shed? Why build a mobile building?
TO. A theater is constantly changing. Why not move a little more? Converting an exhibition hall into an auditorium had to be something simple, electric. [Before]To save money they did it manually. Today the result is poor.
Q Is risk related to intellectual growth?
TO. Challenges strengthen me. Comfort makes me sleepy. I don’t understand taking risks for the sake of the risk – but I understand the reward after the risk. It is a source of energy, life and change. I often knew that if I took risks I would lose offers, but I didn’t know how to do anything else.
Q You’re also a professor at Princeton. Do you teach risk?
TO. I teach the students. I free them from what they have learned so they can think. Prejudice can limit thinking. I ask them how to deal with the obsolescence and speed of the world in something as slow as architecture.
When they had something half-finished, I changed the assignment and asked them to adapt it. The exercise destabilized them, they had to rethink everything. you hated me But they learned a lot.
Elizabeth Diller poses on the High Line, a project by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations and Piet Oudolf.Vincent Tullo
Q You are one of the architects behind 21st century New York. And you came to this town when you were five years old.
TO. My parents had to say goodbye to their lives. It was traumatic. They left their past in Poland. Also her consolation: They had money there. But they came to what was considered the land of opportunity. Traumatized by the Holocaust, they wanted to flee as far as possible so that their children could have a life.
Q did you end up having it
TO. Well… they were always scared, but I studied whatever I wanted.
Q Did you have a religious childhood?
TO. In my house, religion was a cultural issue, not a spiritual one. My father was Czech and my mother Polish. They operated textile factories in Lodz. Neither he nor my mother had studied [in university]. He was an enterprising man. He spoke languages. Shortly after arriving in New York, he learned English. He was a survivor. My mother, on the other hand, never adjusted. She spoke to me in Polish – thanks to that I still speak it. Sometimes I think it was my fault: that she didn’t learn English by talking to me.
Q Her parents left Poland in 1959. Did you flee from National Socialism?
TO. Even after the war there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Even though my father wasn’t religious, he was Jewish. My father’s nine brothers and my grandparents perished in concentration camps. I ran away from this pain in New York as a kid. Today I regret not having asked more questions. But in my house, everyone wanted to forget and start over.
Q Your brother was 13 when you left.
TO. He wanted to forget. In Lodz he was bullied because he was Jewish. Here he was able to study engineering. Today he no longer identifies as a Jew.
Q You too?
TO. It depends who is asking.
Q So you have a flexible identity?
TO. A survivor’s identity. I feel European. But not particularly Polish. And at the same time, I’m a real New Yorker. I believe that my ethics and sensitivity to what is different comes from my parents.
I’ve never felt quite American, whatever that might be. I’m used to change. I’m interested in fixing things. I don’t know how this conflicts with my parents’ decision to run away from problems. But I am like that. In my work – and in my life – I confront things and try to change them. Children run away in pain. But then you realize how much guilt you end up bearing.
Q how were your parents
TO. My parents were overprotective. I think that loss scared them. The damage you take increases over a lifetime.
Q What did your parents do when they arrived in New York?
TO. You started from scratch in the Bronx. My father carried sacks full of fruit. My mother cleaned offices. At the end of his life, my father fulfilled the American dream of seeing his children go to college. I ended up running to the hotel. We have never felt poor.
Q And in this context you have decided to become an artist.
TO. What worried my mother was that she didn’t want me to be financially dependent on men. She was obsessed with it.
Q And then you go ahead and fall in love with your teacher.
TO. That also happened. But my mother always supported me. She asked me if I wanted to study architecture. When I said no, she insisted I become a dentist! She wanted me to have a job. So I studied fine arts and after two years switched to architecture. That’s where I met Rick. He was my crush.
Q You were 23 and he was 42.
TO. It’s all the more shocking that we’re still together. We have dedicated our lives to architecture.
Q It seems like you are the strong one in the relationship.
TO. Because I talk a lot. I could never have done what I did without him. He’s a great teacher and people love him.
Elizabeth Diller.Vincent Tullo
Q Do you have children?
TO. Ric has children from a previous marriage. We had none. Sometimes I think about it. I’ve spent my life procrastinating: it’s always next year and in the end that year isn’t here yet. I’m happy with the life I have. How to know what would have been better? Do you have children?
Q Two.
TO. have you stopped working
Q No. I think I would have gone insane.
TO. Rich had four. If I had asked he would have agreed to get another one but I didn’t want to force it. The only one who pressured me was my mother and… I didn’t listen to her.
Q Your mother put pressure on you to have a life of your own, but also to have children!
TO. For her it was not a contradiction. She wanted me to learn English and spoke to me in Polish! That’s why I sank when she died.
Q Was it difficult for you to create a lasting work?
TO. Building was not our passion. Ric was tired of architecture. And I was pretty rebellious. I didn’t like authority. I think he liked that about me. I was naughty as a kid. Maybe because of my parents’ overzealousness.
Q Weren’t you a good student?
TO. It was the time of the Vietnam War and I spent more time protesting than studying. I remember my youth as a perpetual protest: rallies, drugs…
Q drugs in school?
TO. It was a different era, with its difficulties and its advantages. I spent a third of my time at the university, another third at protests and the other third at MoMA [the Museum of Modern Art].
Q After a couple of decades, you approved the expansion of this museum. Who took you there for the first time?
TO. I went alone My parents liked nature and sports. And I was fascinated by the modern world. I wanted to be a sculptor.
Q How much freedom did you have in designing the MoMA extension?
TO. I know the museum by heart. I knew the problems: It was disconnected from the city. You had to walk half a mile before you could see art. It was an unnatural, artificial building – constantly crowded.
Q Do cities thrive when rents are cheap?
TO. The New York of my youth was like that. A cheap rent gives you time to create, think and live. I spent the day on the street. That opened my mind a lot.
Q Why did you finally become an architect?
TO. i wanted to learn From photography I went to cinema; and from cinema to architecture. For me, architecture seemed more able to change and defend interdisciplinary ideas.
Q The interface between the disciplines defines your work.
TO. In the art world, evidence—and even doubt—is welcome. Also insight. In architecture, you spend the day explaining why you do things.
Q Do you feel that there is a fear of what is different in your professional world?
TO. Fear is always harmful. And it always describes who expresses it more than who receives it. But we suffered. We were artists for architects and architects for artists. Our work was dissident: it didn’t fit. When it comes to scholarships or teaching positions, being in no man’s land is a problem. However, as a woman, I believe that living in New York has benefited me from what many have struggled before.
Q Did you want to belong?
TO. We don’t work with a formula. We experiment, question, mix. We have pushed the boundaries of architecture. And the architectural community thought we were geeks.
Q One of your first works was the Blur Building, erected over water in Switzerland. Can an experiment become a building?
TO. I honestly think so. But these projects were temporary. Others are short-lived without being designed to have a short lifespan. Austerity measures are often an excuse to avoid experimentation.
Elizabeth Diller pictured in The High Line – one of her best-known works – in New York City. Vincent Tullo
Q Architecture is taught today as a hybrid discipline.
TO. We have always defended the mix. We don’t know how to see it any other way.
Q John Hejduk – your teacher – felt that the act of building corrupts architecture. Do you agree?
TO. No. He believed that architecture was a discipline and not a profession. So the training I received was to relate architecture to art, literature, creativity…
Q Can you contribute to architecture without building?
TO. forks. By making laws, setting up commissions, and giving opportunities to others, cities come into being. For me, any way of creating space is architecture.
Q Do you feel the need to make groundbreaking proposals?
TO. It’s not about surprise, it’s about exploration.
Q The High Line is the restoration of thousands of old railroad tracks that have been converted into an elevated park. The project changed the life of the old structure.
TO. It is architecture that starts with the obsolete and protects nature. It has to do with our adaptability.
Q And the ability to listen to local residents.
TO. I had never heard what people said before. As I got out of the academic vision to do it, my perspective changed. After the September 11 attacks, a wave of courtesy swept through New York. We felt part of the same city. We had to take care of her [the city] and take care of ourselves. This part of Manhattan was an empty, hopeless place: a perfect place for improvement.
Q Are you in favor of citizens being asked how the city should be?
TO. Getting out of your own world is good, but it takes hours of meetings and listening. For me, the idea of turning urban waste into a living part of the city was intriguing. It went from the infrastructure to the ruins, from the ruins to the garden and from the garden to the promenade.
Q Is nature more powerful than culture?
TO. nature is culture It’s less about building and more about working with nature. And with neighbors. And it cost more to remove the tracks than to maintain them. They were already covered with vegetation. In this neighborhood of New York [Hudson Yards], there were hardly any parks. The solution was to leave it almost as it was. And make it safer. It touched a nerve that needed to be touched.
Q That’s what artists do: they anticipate the future.
TO. We are so tied in front of our screens that seeing what was happening on the street seemed like a discovery!
Q What did you learn while building?
TO. That there can be a lot of creativity in the effort. [Thomas] As Edison put it, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent sweat.” Architecture is a team effort. TO [building] Approval is more important than a line. The greatest difficulties in architecture are not of a technical nature: they arise from dealing with people.
Q It’s easier to get a building to move…
TO. Like The Shed. Oh well. Technical problems are fun and challenging. Explaining to people that what is good for one resident is good for everyone is more difficult. But I like it – it’s the story of my life. My friends flee from the fire and I run towards it.
Q how do you eat
TO. Where others see failure, I see opportunity. I remember when we were awarded the Lincoln Center expansion, Frank Gehry said, “Don’t touch it: these people are impossible.” And I thought, I’m going to prove him wrong. Of course it took a lot of energy. I had to host a conference to explain our design. I showed six different options. It’s true: everyone is afraid of change.
Q You don’t seem to be.
TO. I see it as an opportunity for growth. I came to New York at the age of five!
Q Which of your projects have reinvented New York?
TO. The expansion of Lincoln Center. Philip Johnson’s original building was designed to be accessible by car. Not ours. This marks the development of the city.
Q What can the most intellectual type of architecture contribute to those parts of the world that have limited resources?
TO. It takes a lot of intelligence to deal with scarcity and chaos. That is where the great architectural challenges lie: between the slowness [of construction]the high cost of buildings and the pressing needs of the world.
Q Has immigration prepared you for austerity?
TO. I don’t have a strict life. But I prefer one fabulous thing to a hundred good ones.
Q What is your relationship with money?
TO. I spend a lot But it doesn’t motivate me. I like the convenience and the fact that I don’t have to worry about being able to pay [architectural] Studio. But I prefer freedom to money.
Q Are you a freelance architect?
TO. i am a free person I don’t have many things: no cars, no plans, no gold. My luxury is the freedom of not having to do commercial assignments; no list of good jobs and others just paying the bills. To me that means being rich.
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