EG 2007
Liz Diller: The Blur Building and other tech-empowered architecture
Filmed:
Readability: 4.5
771,724 views
In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R's more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.
Liz Diller - Designer
Liz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice. Full bio
Liz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:16
Aside from keeping the rain out and producing some usable space,
0
0
7000
00:23
architecture is nothing but a special-effects machine
1
7000
4000
00:27
that delights and disturbs the senses.
2
11000
3000
00:30
Our work is across media. The work comes in all shapes and sizes.
3
14000
5000
00:35
It's small and large. This is an ashtray, a water glass.
4
19000
4000
00:39
From urban planning and master planning
5
23000
3000
00:42
to theater and all sorts of stuff.
6
26000
4000
00:46
The thing that all the work has in common
7
30000
2000
00:48
is that it challenges the assumptions about conventions of space.
8
32000
5000
00:53
And these are everyday conventions,
9
37000
2000
00:55
conventions that are so obvious that we are blinded by their familiarity.
10
39000
5000
01:00
And I've assembled a sampling of work
11
44000
4000
01:04
that all share a kind of productive nihilism
12
48000
4000
01:08
that's used in the service of creating a particular special effect.
13
52000
4000
01:12
And that is something like nothing, or something next to nothing.
14
56000
5000
01:18
It's done through a form of subtraction or obstruction or interference
15
62000
5000
01:23
in a world that we naturally sleepwalk through.
16
67000
4000
01:27
This is an image that won us a competition
17
71000
3000
01:30
for an exhibition pavilion for the Swiss Expo 2002
18
74000
4000
01:34
on Lake Neuchatel, near Geneva.
19
78000
2000
01:36
And we wanted to use the water not only as a context,
20
80000
3000
01:39
but as a primary building material.
21
83000
2000
01:41
We wanted to make an architecture of atmosphere.
22
85000
3000
01:44
So, no walls, no roof, no purpose --
23
88000
3000
01:47
just a mass of atomized water, a big cloud.
24
91000
3000
01:50
And this proposal was a reaction to the over-saturation
25
94000
3000
01:53
of emergent technologies in recent national and world expositions,
26
97000
5000
01:58
which feeds, or has been feeding, our insatiable appetite
27
102000
5000
02:03
for visual stimulation with an ever greater digital virtuosity.
28
107000
6000
02:09
High definition, in our opinion, has become the new orthodoxy.
29
113000
4000
02:14
And we ask the question, can we use technology, high technology,
30
118000
4000
02:18
to make an expo pavilion that's decidedly low definition,
31
122000
6000
02:24
that also challenges the conventions of space and skin,
32
128000
3000
02:27
and rethinks our dependence on vision?
33
131000
2000
02:29
So this is how we sought to do it.
34
133000
3000
02:32
Water's pumped from the lake and is filtered
35
136000
2000
02:34
and shot as a fine mist through an array of high-pressure fog nozzles,
36
138000
5000
02:39
35,000 of them. And a weather station is on the structure.
37
143000
4000
02:43
It reads the shifting conditions of temperature, humidity,
38
147000
3000
02:46
wind direction, wind speed, dew point,
39
150000
3000
02:49
and it processes this data in a central computer
40
153000
3000
02:52
that calibrates the degree of water pressure
41
156000
3000
02:55
and distribution of water throughout.
42
159000
2000
02:57
And it's a responsive system that's trained on actual weather.
43
161000
5000
03:02
So, this is just in construction, and there's a tensegrity structure.
44
166000
4000
03:06
It's about 300 feet wide, the size of a football field,
45
170000
3000
03:09
and it sits on just four very delicate columns.
46
173000
4000
03:13
These are the fog nozzles, the interface,
47
177000
3000
03:16
and basically the system is kind of reading the real weather,
48
180000
4000
03:20
and producing kind of semi-artificial and real weather.
49
184000
4000
03:24
So, we're very interested in creating weather. I don't know why.
50
188000
4000
03:28
Now, here we go, one side, the outside
51
192000
3000
03:31
and then from the inside of the space
52
195000
2000
03:33
you can see what the quality of the space was.
53
197000
2000
03:35
Unlike entering any normal space,
54
199000
3000
03:38
entering Blur is like stepping into a habitable medium.
55
202000
4000
03:42
It's formless, featureless, depthless, scaleless, massless,
56
206000
5000
03:47
purposeless and dimensionless.
57
211000
2000
03:49
All references are erased,
58
213000
3000
03:52
leaving only an optical whiteout and white noise of the pulsing nozzles.
59
216000
6000
03:58
So, this is an exhibition pavilion
60
222000
3000
04:01
where there is absolutely nothing to see and nothing to do.
61
225000
3000
04:05
And we pride ourselves -- it's a spectacular anti-spectacle
62
229000
6000
04:11
in which all the conventions of spectacle are turned on their head.
63
235000
4000
04:15
So, the audience is dispersed,
64
239000
2000
04:17
focused attention and dramatic build-up and climax
65
241000
3000
04:20
are all replaced by a kind of attenuated attention
66
244000
3000
04:23
that's sustained by a sense of apprehension caused by the fog.
67
247000
4000
04:27
And this is very much like how the Victorian novel used fog in this way.
68
251000
6000
04:33
So here the world is put out of focus,
69
257000
3000
04:36
while our visual dependence is put into focus.
70
260000
3000
04:40
The public, you know, once disoriented
71
264000
3000
04:43
can actually ascend to the angel deck above
72
267000
4000
04:47
and then just come down under those lips into the water bar.
73
271000
3000
04:50
So, all the waters of the world are served there,
74
274000
2000
04:52
so we thought that, you know, after being at the water
75
276000
4000
04:56
and moving through the water and breathing the water,
76
280000
3000
04:59
you could also drink this building.
77
283000
3000
05:02
And so it is sort of a theme,
78
286000
4000
05:06
but it goes a little bit, you know, deeper than that.
79
290000
3000
05:09
We really wanted to bring out
80
293000
2000
05:11
our absolute dependence on this master sense,
81
295000
4000
05:15
and maybe share our kind of sensibility with our other senses.
82
299000
4000
05:19
You know, when we did this project it was a kind of tough sell,
83
303000
4000
05:23
because the Swiss said, "Well, why are we going to spend, you know,
84
307000
2000
05:25
10 million dollars producing an effect
85
309000
4000
05:29
that we already have in natural abundance that we hate?"
86
313000
2000
05:31
And, you know, we thought -- well, we tried to convince them.
87
315000
5000
05:36
And in the end, you know, they adapted this as a national icon
88
320000
6000
05:42
that came to represent Swiss doubt, which we -- you know,
89
326000
5000
05:47
it was kind of a meaning machine
90
331000
2000
05:49
that everybody kind of laid on their own meanings off of.
91
333000
2000
05:51
Anyway, it's a temporary structure that was ultimately destroyed,
92
335000
3000
05:54
and so it's now a memory of an apparition, actually,
93
338000
4000
05:58
but it continues to live in edible form.
94
342000
3000
06:01
And this is the highest honor
95
345000
2000
06:03
to be bestowed upon an architect in Switzerland -- to have a chocolate bar.
96
347000
5000
06:08
Anyway, moving along.
97
352000
2000
06:10
So in the '80s and '90s, we were mostly known for independent work,
98
354000
5000
06:15
such as installation artist, architect,
99
359000
4000
06:19
commissioned projects by museums and non-for-profit organizations.
100
363000
5000
06:24
And we did a lot of media work,
101
368000
3000
06:27
also a lot of experimental theater projects.
102
371000
2000
06:29
In 2003, the Whitney mounted a retrospective of our work
103
373000
5000
06:34
that featured a lot of this work from the '80s and '90s.
104
378000
3000
06:38
However, the work itself resisted the very nature of a retrospective,
105
382000
6000
06:44
and this is just some of the stuff that was in the show.
106
388000
3000
06:47
This was a piece on tourism in the United States.
107
391000
3000
06:50
This is "Soft Sell" for 42nd Street.
108
394000
3000
06:53
This was something done at the Cartier Foundation.
109
397000
3000
06:56
"Master/Slave" at the MOMA, the project series, a piece called "Parasite."
110
400000
5000
07:01
And so there were many, many of these kinds of projects.
111
405000
3000
07:04
Anyway, they gave us the whole fourth floor, and, you know,
112
408000
6000
07:10
the problem of the retrospective
113
414000
2000
07:12
was something we were very uncomfortable with.
114
416000
2000
07:14
It's a kind of invention of the museum
115
418000
2000
07:16
that's supposed to bring a kind of cohesive understanding
116
420000
4000
07:20
to the public of a body of work.
117
424000
2000
07:22
And our work doesn't really resolve itself into a body in any way at all.
118
426000
5000
07:27
And one of the recurring themes, by the way, that in the work
119
431000
5000
07:32
was a kind of hostility toward the museum itself,
120
436000
3000
07:35
and asking about the conventions of the museum, like the wall, the white wall.
121
439000
5000
07:40
So, what you see here
122
444000
2000
07:42
is basically a plan of many installations that were put there.
123
446000
3000
07:45
And we actually had to install white walls
124
449000
3000
07:48
to separate these pieces, which didn't belong together.
125
452000
2000
07:50
But these white walls became a kind of target and weapon at the same time.
126
454000
5000
07:55
We used the wall to partition the 13 installations of the project
127
459000
3000
07:58
and produce a kind of acoustic and visual separation.
128
462000
4000
08:03
And what you see is -- actually,
129
467000
2000
08:05
the red dotted line shows the track of this performing element,
130
469000
5000
08:10
which was a new piece that created -- that we created for the --
131
474000
3000
08:13
which was a robotic drill, basically, that went all the way around,
132
477000
4000
08:17
cruised the museum, went all around the walls and did a lot of damage.
133
481000
5000
08:23
So, the drill was mounted on this robotic arm.
134
487000
3000
08:26
We worked with, by the way, Honeybee Robotics. This is the brain.
135
490000
4000
08:30
Honeybee Robotics designed the Mars Driller,
136
494000
3000
08:33
and it was really very much fun to work with them.
137
497000
2000
08:35
They weren't doing their primary work, which was for the government,
138
499000
4000
08:39
while they were helping us with this.
139
503000
3000
08:42
In any case, the way it works is that
140
506000
2000
08:44
an intelligent navigator basically maps the entire surface of these walls.
141
508000
6000
08:50
So, unfolded it's about 300 linear feet.
142
514000
3000
08:53
And it randomly generates points within a three-dimensional matrix.
143
517000
4000
08:57
It selects a point, it guides the drill to that point, it pierces the dry wall,
144
521000
5000
09:02
leaving a half-inch hole before traveling to the next location.
145
526000
4000
09:07
Initially these holes were lone blemishes,
146
531000
4000
09:11
and as the exhibition continued
147
535000
2000
09:13
the walls became increasingly perforated.
148
537000
3000
09:16
So eventually holes on both sides of the wall aligned,
149
540000
3000
09:19
opening views from gallery to gallery.
150
543000
2000
09:21
Clusters of holes randomly opened up sections of wall.
151
545000
4000
09:25
And so this was a three-month performance piece
152
549000
3000
09:28
in which the wall was made into kind of an increasingly unstable element.
153
552000
6000
09:35
And also the acoustic separation was destroyed.
154
559000
3000
09:39
Also the visual separation.
155
563000
2000
09:41
And there was also this constant background groan, which was very annoying.
156
565000
6000
09:47
And this is one of the blackout spaces
157
571000
2000
09:49
where there's a video piece that became totally not useful.
158
573000
3000
09:52
So rather than securing a neutral background for the artworks on display,
159
576000
4000
09:56
the wall now actively competed for attention.
160
580000
3000
10:00
And this acoustical nuisance and visual nuisance
161
584000
4000
10:04
basically exposed the discomfort of the work
162
588000
3000
10:07
to this encompassing nature of the retrospective.
163
591000
5000
10:13
It was really great when it started to break up all of the curatorial text.
164
597000
4000
10:17
Moving along to a project that we finished about a year ago.
165
601000
4000
10:21
It's the ICA -- the Institute of Contemporary Art -- in Boston,
166
605000
5000
10:26
which is on the waterfront.
167
610000
2000
10:28
And there's not enough time to really introduce the building,
168
612000
3000
10:31
but I'll simply say that the building negotiates
169
615000
2000
10:33
between this outwardly focused nature of the site --
170
617000
6000
10:39
you know, it's a really great waterfront site in Boston --
171
623000
3000
10:42
and this contradictory other desire to have an inwardly focused museum.
172
626000
5000
10:47
So, the nature of the building is that it looks at looking --
173
631000
4000
10:51
I mean that's its primary objective,
174
635000
2000
10:54
both its program and its architectural conceit.
175
638000
4000
11:00
The building incorporates the site,
176
644000
4000
11:04
but it dispenses it in very small doses
177
648000
4000
11:08
in the way that the museum is choreographed.
178
652000
3000
11:11
So, you come in and you're basically squeezed by the theater,
179
655000
4000
11:15
by the belly of the theater, into this very compressed space
180
659000
2000
11:17
where the view is turned off.
181
661000
2000
11:19
Then you come up in this glass elevator right near the curtain wall.
182
663000
5000
11:24
This elevator's about the size of a New York City studio apartment.
183
668000
4000
11:28
And then, this is a view going up,
184
672000
2000
11:30
and then you could come into the theater,
185
674000
2000
11:32
which can actually deny the view or open it up and become a backdrop.
186
676000
5000
11:37
And many musicians choose to use the theater glass walls totally open.
187
681000
6000
11:43
The view is denied in the galleries
188
687000
2000
11:45
where we receive just natural light,
189
689000
3000
11:48
and then exposed again in the north gallery with a panoramic view.
190
692000
5000
11:53
The original intention of this space,
191
697000
2000
11:55
which was unfortunately never realized,
192
699000
3000
11:58
was to use lenticular glass
193
702000
2000
12:00
which allowed only a kind of perpendicular view out.
194
704000
3000
12:03
In this very narrow space that connects east and west galleries
195
707000
3000
12:06
the intention was really to not get a climax,
196
710000
4000
12:10
but to have the view stalk you,
197
714000
2000
12:12
so the view would open up as you walked from one end to the other.
198
716000
4000
12:16
This was eliminated because the view was too good,
199
720000
3000
12:19
and the mayor said, "No, we just want this open."
200
723000
3000
12:22
The architect lost here.
201
726000
2000
12:24
But culminating -- and that's where this hooks into the theme of my little talk --
202
728000
3000
12:27
is this Mediatheque,
203
731000
2000
12:29
which is suspended from the cantilevered portion of the building.
204
733000
4000
12:33
So this is an 80-foot cantilever -- it's quite substantial.
205
737000
3000
12:36
So, it's already sticking out into space enough,
206
740000
4000
12:40
and then from that is this, is this small area called the Mediatheque.
207
744000
5000
12:45
The Mediatheque has something like 16 stations
208
749000
4000
12:49
where the public can get onto the server
209
753000
2000
12:51
and look at digital artworks or also curated artworks off the web.
210
755000
4000
12:55
And this was really a kind of very important part of this building,
211
759000
7000
13:02
and here is a point where architecture --
212
766000
2000
13:04
this is like technology-free -- architecture is only a framing device,
213
768000
4000
13:08
it only edits the harbor view, the industrial harbor
214
772000
3000
13:12
just through its walls, its floors and its ceiling,
215
776000
4000
13:16
to only expose the water itself, the texture of water,
216
780000
6000
13:22
much like a hypnotic effect created by electronic snow
217
786000
4000
13:26
or a lava lamp or something like that.
218
790000
3000
13:29
And here is where we really felt that there was a great convergence
219
793000
4000
13:33
of the technological and the natural in the project.
220
797000
4000
13:38
But there is just no information, it's just -- it's just hypnosis.
221
802000
6000
13:45
Moving along to Lincoln Center.
222
809000
2000
13:48
These are the guys that did the project in the first place, 50 years ago.
223
812000
4000
13:52
We're taking over now, doing work that ranges in scale
224
816000
3000
13:55
from small-scale repairs to major renovations and major facility expansions.
225
819000
6000
14:01
But we're doing it with a lot less testosterone.
226
825000
3000
14:04
This is the extent of the work that's to be completed by 2010.
227
828000
5000
14:09
And for the purposes of this talk,
228
833000
2000
14:11
I wanted to isolate just a part of a project that's even a part of a project
229
835000
4000
14:15
that touches a little bit on this theme of architectural special effects,
230
839000
4000
14:19
and it happens to be our current obsession,
231
843000
4000
14:23
and it plays a little bit with the purging and adding of distraction.
232
847000
6000
14:29
It's Alice Tully Hall, and it's tucked under the Juilliard Building
233
853000
4000
14:33
and descends several levels under the street.
234
857000
4000
14:37
So, this is the entrance to Tully Hall as it used to be,
235
861000
4000
14:41
before the renovation, which we just started.
236
865000
2000
14:43
And we asked ourselves, why couldn't it be exhibitionistic,
237
867000
3000
14:46
like the Met, or like some of the other buildings at Lincoln Center?
238
870000
3000
14:49
And one of the things that we were asked to do
239
873000
3000
14:52
was give it a street identity, expand the lobbies and make it visually accessible.
240
876000
5000
14:57
And this building, which is just naturally hermetic, we stripped.
241
881000
4000
15:01
We basically did a striptease, architectural striptease,
242
885000
3000
15:04
where we're framing with this kind of canopy --
243
888000
5000
15:09
the underside of three levels of expansion of Juilliard,
244
893000
3000
15:12
about 45,000 square feet -- cutting it to the angle of Broadway,
245
896000
5000
15:17
and then exposing, using that canopy to frame Tully Hall.
246
901000
5000
15:22
Before and after shot. (Applause)
247
906000
3000
15:26
Wait a minute, it's just in that state, we have a long way to go.
248
910000
4000
15:30
But what I wanted to do was take a couple of seconds that I have left
249
914000
3000
15:33
to just talk about the hall itself,
250
917000
2000
15:35
which is kind of where we're really doing a massive amount of work.
251
919000
4000
15:39
So, the hall is a multi-purpose hall.
252
923000
3000
15:42
The clients have asked us to produce a great chamber music hall.
253
926000
5000
15:47
Now, that's really tough to do with a hall that has 1,100 seats.
254
931000
4000
15:51
Chamber and the notion of chamber has to do with salons
255
935000
3000
15:54
and small-scale performances. They asked us to bring an intimacy.
256
938000
3000
15:57
How do you bring an intimacy into a hall?
257
941000
3000
16:00
Intimacy for us means a lot of different things.
258
944000
2000
16:02
It means acoustic intimacy and it means visual intimacy.
259
946000
4000
16:06
One thing is that the subway is running and rumbling right under the hall.
260
950000
4000
16:10
Another thing that could be fixed is the shape of the hall.
261
954000
2000
16:12
It's like a coffin, it basically sends all the sound,
262
956000
3000
16:15
like a gutter-ball effect, down the aisles.
263
959000
2000
16:17
The walls are made of absorptive surface,
264
961000
3000
16:20
half absorptive, half reflective,
265
964000
2000
16:22
which is not very good for concert sound.
266
966000
3000
16:25
This is Avery Fisher Hall, but the notion of junk -- visual junk --
267
969000
4000
16:29
was very, very important to us, to get rid of visual noise.
268
973000
4000
16:33
Because we can't eliminate a single seat,
269
977000
2000
16:35
the architecture is restricted to 18 inches.
270
979000
3000
16:38
So it's a very, very thin architecture.
271
982000
3000
16:41
First we do a kind of partial box and box separation,
272
985000
4000
16:45
to take away the distraction of the subway noise.
273
989000
2000
16:47
Next we wrap the entire hall -- almost like this Olivetti keyboard --
274
991000
5000
16:52
with a material, with a wood material
275
996000
3000
16:55
that basically covers all the surfaces:
276
999000
2000
16:57
wall, ceiling, floor, stage, steps, everything, boxes.
277
1001000
4000
17:01
But it's acoustically engineered to focus the sound into the house
278
1005000
4000
17:05
and back to the stage. And here's an acoustic shelf.
279
1009000
3000
17:08
Looking up the hall. Just a section of the stage.
280
1012000
3000
17:11
Just everything is lined, it incorporates --
281
1015000
3000
17:14
every single thing that you could possibly imagine
282
1018000
2000
17:16
is tucked into this high-performance skin.
283
1020000
2000
17:18
But one more added feature.
284
1022000
2000
17:20
So now that we've stripped the hall of all visual distraction,
285
1024000
3000
17:23
everything that prevents this intimacy
286
1027000
3000
17:26
which is supposed to connect the house, the audience,
287
1030000
3000
17:29
with the performers, we add one little detail,
288
1033000
4000
17:33
one piece of architectural excess, a special effect: lighting.
289
1037000
4000
17:37
We very strongly believe that the theatrics of a concert hall
290
1041000
4000
17:41
is as much in the space of intermission and the space of arrival
291
1045000
4000
17:45
as it is when the concert starts.
292
1049000
2000
17:47
So what we wanted to do was produce this effect,
293
1051000
4000
17:51
this lighting effect,
294
1055000
2000
17:53
which made us have to bioengineer the wood walls.
295
1057000
4000
17:57
And what it entails is the use of resin, of this very thick resin
296
1061000
6000
18:03
with a veneer of the same kind of wood that's used throughout the hall,
297
1067000
4000
18:07
in a kind of seamless continuity
298
1071000
4000
18:11
that wraps the hall in light, like a belt of light: rather than separating,
299
1075000
5000
18:16
like a proscenium would separate the audience from performers,
300
1080000
4000
18:20
it connects audience with players.
301
1084000
2000
18:22
And this is a mockup that is in Salt Lake City
302
1086000
6000
18:28
that gives you a sense of what this is going to look like in full-scale.
303
1092000
5000
18:33
And this is a guy from Salt Lake City,
304
1097000
3000
18:36
this is what they look like out there.
305
1100000
2000
18:38
(Laughter)
306
1102000
3000
18:41
And for us, I mean it's really kind of a very strange thing,
307
1105000
3000
18:44
but the moments in the hall that the buzz kind of dies down
308
1108000
6000
18:50
when the audience is waiting for the performance to begin,
309
1114000
3000
18:53
very similar to the parting of curtains or the raising of a chandelier,
310
1117000
4000
18:57
the walls will just exude this glow, temporarily stealing attention from the stage.
311
1121000
6000
19:03
And this is Tully in construction now.
312
1127000
4000
19:07
I have no ending to say, except that I'm a couple of minutes over.
313
1131000
4000
19:11
Thank you very much.
314
1135000
2000
19:13
(Applause)
315
1137000
2000
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Liz Diller - DesignerLiz Diller and her maverick firm DS+R bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small projects in architecture, urban design and art -- playing with new materials, tampering with space and spectacle in ways that make you look twice.
Why you should listen
Liz Diller's firm, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, might just be the first post-wall architects. From a mid-lake rotunda made of fog to a gallery that destroys itself with a robotic drill, her brainy takes on the essence of buildings are mind-bending and rebellious. DS+R partakes of criticism that goes past academic papers and into real structures -- buildings and art installations that seem to tease the squareness of their neighbors.
DS+R was the first architecture firm to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant -- and it also won an Obie for Jet Lag, a wildly creative piece of multimedia off-Broadway theater. A reputation for rampant repurposing of materials and tricksy tinkering with space -- on stage, on paper, on the waterfront -- have made DS+R a sought-after firm, winning accounts from the Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall and the School of American Ballet, as part of the Lincoln Center overhaul; at Brown University; and on New York's revamp of Governer's Island. Their Institute for Comtemporary Art has opened up a new piece of Boston's waterfront, creating an elegant space that embraces the water.
Liz Diller | Speaker | TED.com