The ciliary muscle reproduces the effect of a lens and allows the eye to focus or blur vision. It became the emblem of the critical vision that Diller + Scofidio (+ Renfro) had in their research and experimentation, including most recently the High Line park design for New York City. Their interdisciplinary projects range from objects, installations, and performances to media and architecture. In recent years they have expanded– with a third partner joining their studio–to embrace projects on a larger urban scale. Diller + Scofidio (+Renfro) covers their development, documenting about twenty works, for the earliest to the most recent. It also includes essays investigating the studio’s contect, influences and strategies; some interviews with the architects; and a scheme showing the evolutiuon and growth of the studio from 1979 to today.

In Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images, Edward Dimendberg offers the first comprehensive treatment of one of the most imaginative contemporary design studios. Since founding their practice in 1979, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio have integrated architecture, urban design, media art, and the performing arts in a dazzling array of projects, which include performances, art installations, and books, in addition to buildings and public spaces. At the center of this work is a fascination with vision and a commitment to questioning the certainty and security long associated with architecture. Dimendberg provides an extensive overview of these concerns and the history of the studio, revealing how principals Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro continue to expand the definition of architecture, question the nature of space and vision in contemporary culture, and produce work that is endlessly surprising and rewarding, from New York’s High Line to Blur, an artificial cloud, and Facsimile, a video screen that moves around a building facade. Dimendberg also explores the relation of work by DS+R to that by earlier modernists such as Marcel Duchamp and John Hejduk. He reveals how the fascination of the architects with evolving forms of media, technology, and building materials has produced works that unsettle distinctions among architecture and other media. Based on interviews with the architects, their clients, and collaborators as well as unprecedented access to unpublished documents, sketchbook entries, and archival records, Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the most thorough consideration of DS+R in any language. Illustrated with many previously unpublished renderings in addition to photos from significant contemporary photographers, this book is an essential study of one of the most significant and creative architecture and design studios working today.

Combining transgender studies with the ’neomodernist’ architectures of the internationally renowned firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) and with modernist writers (Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf) whose work anticipates that of transgender studies, this book challenges the implicit ’spatial models’ of popular narratives of transgender - interiority, ownership, sovereignty, structure, stability, and domesticity - to advance a novel theorization of transgender as a matter of exteriority, groundlessness, ornamentation, and movement. With case studies spanning the US and UK, Transgender Architectonics examines the ways in which modernist architecture can contribute to our understanding of how it is that humans are able to transform, shedding light on the manner in which architecture, space, and the spatial metaphors of gender can play significant - if often unrealized - potential roles in body and gender transformation. By remedying both the absence of actual architecture in queer theory's discussions of space and also architectural theory's marginal treatment of transgender, this volume constitutes a serious intervention in the field of ’queer space’. It draws on modernist literature in order to reckon with and rebuild the architectural ideas that already implicitly structure common understandings of the queer and transgender self. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in queer theory, the body and transformation, gender and sexuality, modernist writing and architectural theory.

Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.

Originally released in 2017, the book "Sensory Architecture – The Art of Designing for All Senses" by Juliana Duarte Neves receives a second edition in 2024, revised and expanded. Over the past six years, there have been numerous advancements in the study of sensory architecture and many initiatives focused on emotionally engaging the visitor, using the principles of sensory architecture, which has become a gateway to new fields of research. This second edition brings a refinement of the design methodology proposed in the original book and current examples that make its understanding and applicability clearer. And the new chapter "Unfolding of Sensory Architecture" presents two examples of more recent areas of study. "This new edition broadens horizons with the inclusion of two fundamental contributions to the consolidation of the field of sensory architecture studies in Brazil: the excellent reflections made by Lorí Crízel in the text 'The intertwining of sensory architecture with neuroarchitecture: a synesthetic exploration'; and the very personal contribution of Ana Paula Chacur, architect, researcher, and mother of two autistic children – enriches the content with her unique perspective on 'Autism Spectrum Disorder and sensory architecture'," points out Juliana. It is crucial that architecture collaborates so that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) feel safe and balanced.

This book establishes play as a mode of humanistic inquiry with a profound effect on art, culture and society. Play is treated as a dynamic and relational modality where relationships of all kinds are forged and inquisitive interdisciplinary engagement is embraced. Play cultivates reflection, connection, and creativity, offering new epistemological directions for the humanities. With examples from a range of disciplines including poetry, history, science, religion and media, this book treats play as an object of inquiry, but also as a mode of inquiry. The chapters, each focusing on a specific cultural phenomenon, do not simply put culture on display, they put culture in play, providing a playful lens through which to see the world. The reader is encouraged to read the chapters in this book out of order, allowing constructive collision between ideas, moments in history, and theoretical perspectives. The act of reading this book, like the project of the humanities itself, should be emergent, generative, and playful.

If the 20th century can be characterised by theories and manifestoes, which emanated across every sphere of life from politics to the fine arts, the beginning of the 21st century can be distinguished by its very break from theory. This effective ‘theoretical meltdown’ has manifested itself in a period of uncertainty, which can be perceived in the way disciplines coalesce with each other and blur their parameters: fine art becoming indistinct from advertising imagery; architecture incorporating communication techniques; and sculpture dealing with living spaces; while architecture reshapes fragments of the natural environment. The issue topically calls the contemporary situation in architecture to account. Features writings by and interviews with some of the most remarkable protagonists of the debate: Ole Bouman, Ricardo Diller & Elizabeth Scofidio, Neil Leach, Bernard Tschumi and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Acts as a barometer to architectural design, inviting 10 international critics to highlight the most relevant current work.

This enlightening study explores the set design drawings for theatre and live performance, highlighting their unique qualities within the greater arena of drawing practice and theory. The latest volume in the Drawing In series, Scenographic Design Drawing encourages an interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of drawing with the inclusion of illustrations throughout. Scenographic design drawings visualize the images in the designer's 'mind's eye' early in the design process. They are the initial design tool in the creative engagement with theatre, opera, dance, and non-text-based performance. It is, in particular, this body of drawings that is unique as both a performative and a theatrical representation of multiple worlds within the 'stage space'. Sue Field illuminates this illustration process and identifies how these drawings have functioned and developed over time. Scenographic Design Drawing serves to satisfy an emerging global curiosity and a thirst for new knowledge and understanding in relation to the drawings executed by the historical and contemporary scenographer. This work addresses a critical research gap and shows how the scenographic design drawing continues to be a principal site of innovation, subjectivity, originality and authorship in theatre and live performance.

This book concerns the city and the 'devices' that define the urban environment by their presence, representation or interpretation. The texts offer an interdisciplinary discourse and critique of the complex systems, artifacts, interventions and evidences that can inform our understanding of urban territories; on surfaces, in the margins or within voids. The diverse media of arts practices as well as commercial branding are used to explore narratives that reveal latent characteristics of urban situations that conventional architectural inquiry is unable to do. The subjects covered are presented within a wider framework of urban theory into which are embedded case study examples that outline the practices, processes and interpretations of each theme. The chapters provide a contemporary reading of urban socio-cultural conditions using 'mapping' as a lens to explore and communicate the social phenomena and lived experiences of the dynamic and temporal city. Mapping is developed as a form of critical instrumentality to expose, record and contribute to the understanding of the singular essences of space, place and networks by thematic, cognitive and experiential modes of investigation.