Renowned architect Elizabeth Diller, whose New York City firm Diller, Scofidio and Renfro was recently selected to design Brown's new Creative Arts Center, addressed a packed MacMillan 117 Wednesday. Diller discussed several of the firm's recent projects in Wednesday's lecture, including the Blur Building in Switzerland, which is constructed primarily from water and mist, and a dance piece called "Moving Target" that uses mirrors and video projection to avoid separating "the audience from the narrative space of the stage," according to the firm's Web site.
Known for its interdisciplinary approach to architecture, Diller, Scofidio and Renfro has also been involved in projects such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and Lincoln Center and the Highline in New York City.
Though she told the audience it is too early to discuss plans for the Creative Arts Center, Diller expressed her excitement about beginning the design process for the new campus building.
"What's great about the project is that it doesn't have a model," she said. "We're going to use a healthy dose of our own experience."
Diller, an architecture professor at Princeton University, told the audience her unique design ideas come from her education as both an artist and an architect and that the Creative Arts Center project is particularly meaningful. "We're very interested in what's going to happen in this interdisciplinary building," she said.
Commenting on the innovative nature of her firm's designs, Diller said Brown "took a big leap" by hiring them but that they "promise to be cooperative." The building, which has a $42-million budget, will be located at 154 Angell St.
Planning for the Creative Arts Center - now scheduled for completion in the fall of 2010 - has moved faster than University officials first anticipated, largely because of an enthusiastic response from University donors. Though the Corporation is requiring that the University complete all fundraising for the project before construction can begin, the "pent-up demand" for a creative arts space has made fundraising quite successful, Ronald Vanden Dorpel AM'71, senior vice president for University advancement, told The Herald earlier this month.
Diller's lecture was sponsored in part by the Cogut Center for the Humanities and a Graduate Student Symposium in Architecture and Urbanism. The symposium, called Urban Transformations/Shifting Identities, continues with a full day of events on Saturday.
