Elizabeth Diller, also known as Liz Diller,[1] is an American architect and partner in Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which she co-founded in 1981.[2] She is also an architecture professor at Princeton University.[3]
Elizabeth Diller was born in 1958 in Łódź, Poland, to Jewish parents. The family emigrated to the United States in 1960 when she was two years old.[4]
Diller earned her B.Arch in 1979 from the Cooper Union School of Architecture.[1] She met Ricardo Scofidio during her studies; he was her teacher then her tutor. After earning her degree and working as an assistant professor, they later married in the 1980s. Since the 2000s, she has become well-known for her work with conceptual architecture, museums and other cultural institutions.[4][5]
Diller is considered among the most influential designers of cultural spaces[6] and in 1999 received the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship in architecture.[7] In 2002, Diller designed the Blur Building for the Swiss Expo with this money.[8]
In 2000 she was awarded the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design.[9]
The studio that Diller co-founded was awarded WSJ. magazine's 2017 Architecture Innovator of the Year Award. It also received the Smithsonian Institution National Design Award.[10]
In 2018 she was named to the Time magazine most-influential list for the second time, and was the only architect on that list.[11][3]
In 2019, Diller became the winner of the Jane Drew Prize, and the eighth winner of the annual Women in Architecture award. She was also awarded the Second Royal Academy Architecture Prize.[12][13][14][15]
In 2022 she was awarded the Wolf Prize in Arts in the category "Architecture".[16]