Leading Voices Episode 5
Elizabeth Diller is a co-founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary design studio based in New York. Alongside Ricardo Scofidio, Diller’s cross-genre work has been distinguished with TIME’s “100 Most Influential People” list and the first grant awarded in the field of architecture from the MacArthur Foundation, which identified Diller and Scofidio as, “architects who 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.”
DS+R’s built work in the public realm includes two of the largest architecture and planning initiatives in New York City’s recent history: 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 for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus. The studio has also completed the 35-acre Zaryadye Park, adjacent to the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral and Red Square in Moscow. The studio has also worked with global cultural institutions to expand access to the arts. The Broad is a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles offering free admission, whose visitorship includes a comparatively younger and more diverse contemporary arts audience, while the V&A Research and Collection Centre, under construction in London, will bring much of the collection out of storage and into public view for the first time. Diller also led two recently completed projects that have reshaped New York’s cultural landscape: the surgical renovation and expansion of MoMA, which brings the museum’s vast collection closer to the public, and The Shed, a start-up multi-arts institution originally conceived by DS+R.
DS+R’s approach to rethinking cultural institutions and civic spaces grew out of self-generated and alternative projects that blur the boundaries between architecture, art, and performance. Many of the studio’s independent works engage materials indigenous to the site, from Traffic, a guerilla installation of 3,000 traffic cones organized in a grid in New York’s Columbus Circle to the Blur Building, a pavilion made of fog on Lake Neuchâtel for the Swiss Expo. As co-creator, producer, and director, Diller’s most recent self-generated work is The Mile-Long Opera: a free, choral performance featuring 1,000 singers atop the High Line that reflected on the alienating speed of change in the contemporary city. The studio has also researched, curated, and designed a number of interactive installations covering a wide range of subjects, including: the Costume Institute’s Charles James: Beyond Fashion and Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the The Catholic Imagination, which have recorded two of the highest attendances for any exhibition in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Art of Scent, a sensory exhibition on the olfactory arts at the Museum of Arts and Design; and Exit, an immersive data-driven installation investigating global human migration patterns, most recently exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Diller is currently working on The Hare with Amber Eyes at the Jewish Museum in New York and on an environmental design for Deep Blue Sea, a collaboration with choreographer Bill T. Jones that will debut at the Park Avenue Armory.
Diller is a Professor of Architectural Design at Princeton University.
Susan Whiting is a recognized leader in operating information services and data companies and understanding consumer behavior. She currently serves as a board director and executive advisor to publicly traded companies and private independent ventures. Ms. Whiting serves on the board of directors for publicly traded Alliant Energy Corporation (LNT) and Kemper Corporation (KMPR). She is also involved in private company board roles and early-stage private ventures like PageVault, goMoxie Software, and Hyde Park Angel Investments. She most recently served as Vice Chair of Nielsen, the largest global research company measuring what consumers “watch” and “buy” in over 106 countries. As Vice Chair, she oversaw global communications and marketing, corporate social responsibility, public and government affairs, diversity and inclusion, and global client engagement. While a business to business company, it remains a consumer brand that provides information about the consumption of programming, extending to social media and mobile platforms.
Susan’s management experience included the start-up development of audience measures for cable television which led to the adoption of Nielsen’s digital measurement strategy and its focus upon measuring media audiences “anytime and anywhere.” Later roles spanned strategy, sales, product development, operations, and senior leadership as well as overseeing a global P&L, with direct responsibility of 50% of the profits for the company. Susan is also a volunteer leader and board member for not-for-profit organizations. Most notably, she serves as Board Chair of The National Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C., and as a board trustee for the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, which she recently chaired, as well as serving as a trustee for The Trust for Public Land and Denison University. In addition, she has mentored female business leaders around the world.
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