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Architecture, design and conceptual art partnership. Diller Scofidio + Renfro [Diller + Scofidio] was formed in 1979 by Elizabeth Diller (b Lodz, Poland, 1954) and Ricardo Scofidio (b New York, NY, 1935) as an interdisciplinary design practice based in New York.

Diller studied at the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York (BArch, 1979) and then worked as an Assistant Professor of Architecture (1981–90) at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, becoming Associate Professor of Architecture at Princeton University in 1990. Scofidio, who also attended Cooper Union (1952–5), obtained his BArch from Columbia University (1960) and became Professor of Architecture at Cooper Union in 1965. In 1997 Charles Renfro joined the firm and was made partner in 2004, at which point the partnership changed its name to Diller Scofidio + Renfro. While the couple (who are married) initially eschewed traditional architectural projects in favor of installations, set design and landscape design, by the 21st century their firm had received commissions for both new buildings and renovations of existing architecture. Diller and Scofidio were the first architects to receive a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (...

(b New York, Sept 8, 1940).

American environmental artist. Johanson is known for art projects created in the natural landscape that solve environmental problems. She is considered a pioneer in ecological art and has made permanent installations in gardens and parks in the United States and abroad. Johanson was born in New York City, where she was a frequent visitor to parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. She graduated from Bennington College where she studied with sculptor Tony Smith. While at Bennington (1958–62) she also met artists Kenneth Noland, David Smith, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline and Philip Guston. In 1964 Johanson completed a master’s degree in art history at Hunter College.

A publishing project offered her the opportunity to catalogue the art of Georgia O’Keeffe, who became her mentor. Johanson’s paintings from the 1960s were Minimalist, as she explored the optical effects of colors. In 1966 she began producing large-scale sculpture, also Minimalist in style. ...

(b New Bedford, MA, 1945).

American performance artist, sculptor, landscape architect, educator, and writer. Sherk received her BA from Rutgers University, Douglass College and her MA from San Francisco State University. She acquired certificates in Landscape Architecture and in Traditional Arts of Japan from the University of California Extension and the Oomoto School of Traditional Japanese Arts, respectively. In the early 1970s she devised the term “Environmental Performance Sculpture” to describe her work, which remained relevant to her later ventures. These works highlighted the significance of “environment,” which she manifested by integrating artistic interventions into cultural and physical conditions of a site. Three early examples include Portable Parks I–III (1970), a series that included the transformation of three urban “dead spaces” into multispecies habitats; Response (1971; University of California San Diego), a performance installation that presented concurrent responses to being in the university from the perspectives of psychology, biology, physics, still photography, and video; and the ...