Ricardo Scofidio, an architect who reworked an deserted railway into New York Metropolis’s widespread Excessive Line park and was among the many first in his career to win a MacArthur Basis “genius grant,” has died. He was 89 and had labored on museums, faculty buildings and different initiatives world wide.
Scofidio died Thursday together with his spouse and structure companion, Elizabeth Diller, by his aspect, stated their agency, Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The studio’s assertion did not say whether or not he had been in poor health; an inquiry was despatched Friday morning.
Named, together with Diller, as amongst Time journal’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2009, Scofidio strove “to make space on his own terms,” the agency stated.
Identified for bringing an avant-garde artwork sensibility to structure, the agency has created adventurous designs in outstanding locations, from The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles to an enormous synthetic cloud above a Swiss lake for a 2002 artwork expo.
“One of the things that is important to us is taking that leap of faith and believing in yourself that you are going to get there,” Scofidio advised interviewer Charlie Rose in 2009.
Different initiatives both constructed or underway embody a park in Moscow, a movie and film museum in Rio de Janeiro; a health-sciences constructing on the College of Sydney; a backed condominium advanced close to Nagoya, Japan; an oceanfront mansion on New York’s Lengthy Island; and a redesign of New York Metropolis’s Lincoln Heart performing arts-complex.
However Scofidio is probably finest identified for main the design of the Excessive Line, the park in a former elevated cargo rail observe on Manhattan’s far West Aspect.
For many years, it was a rusting, off-limits curiosity — and to some, an eyesore — in a pale warehouse district. The tracks have been overgrown with a ribbon of weeds and wildflowers that few New Yorkers received to see, however have been compelling to some who did.
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FILE – Charles Renfro, left, Elizabeth Diller, heart, and Ricardo Scofidio, the design group behind The Broad museum, pose collectively on the museum’s opening and inaugural dinner on Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015, in Los Angeles. (Picture by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
After town determined to show the previous railway right into a park, Scofidio and his companions made a degree of preserving a way of shock and naturalness, crafting walkways interspersed with greenery fairly than an easier, manicured path.
“We wanted to hold on to the magic of this landscape,” Scofidio advised The Related Press in 2008. “There is that edge of vulnerability between this society that we have perfected and these small blades of grass that are able to split open sidewalks and grow in the cracks.”
The primary part of the Excessive Line opened in 2009, serving to catalyze a growth and vacationer increase in its neighborhood.
Born in New York to a jazz musician father and a mom who additionally performed music, Scofidio initially gravitated towards music however later turned to artwork after which structure, he advised The New Yorker in 2007.
He and Diller, who had been one among his college students at The Cooper Union for the Development of Science and Artwork, grew to become a private {and professional} pair in 1979. Charles Renfro was named a 3rd companion of their studio a quarter-century later.
Diller and Scofidio, who glided by Ric, received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Basis “genius grant” in 1999. They have been the primary architects so acknowledged, although New York Occasions structure critic Ada Louise Huxtable had received the dignity beforehand.
Simply final month, Scofidio was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a prestigious honor society for luminaries in structure, artwork, literature and music.
