SAN FRANCISCO, CA.-Since its inception in 1995, the Phyllis Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has brought the highest caliber of scholarship and art commentary to the Bay Area. This year’s distinguished lecturers are Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, founding principals of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a New York City–based architectural firm.

Diller and Scofidio’s influence stems as much from their contributions to the theory and criticism of architecture as from their built works. Particularly well-known for its interdisciplinary approach to architecture, their firm balances thematically driven experimental work—in the form of temporary and permanent site-specific installations, multimedia theater, and electronic media and print—with commercial and cultural architectural projects, as well as housing and urban planning.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has received numerous awards, including a Chrysler Design Award for Innovation in Design, the James Beard Foundation Award, the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship to be awarded to architects, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s McDermott Award for Creative Achievement, and a Progressive Architecture Award. Diller is a professor of architecture at Princeton University, and Scofidio is professor emeritus of architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York.

PHYLLIS WATTIS DISTINGUISHED LECTURE - Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, founding principals, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Henry Urbach, Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design, SFMOMA. Thursday, November 15, 6:30 p.m. Phyllis Wattis Theater.

Diller and Scofidio lead an interdisciplinary firm that works across architecture, urban design, and the visual and performing arts to explore the extended possibilities of architectural practice. Their projects include media installations like Facsimile (2003) in San Francisco’s Moscone Center and innovative works of architecture like the Blur Building (2002), a pavilion created for the Swiss Expo on Lake Neuchatel using water as its primary material, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, which combines dynamic public and contemplative private space. Current projects for the Lincoln Center and the High Line in New York will craft new social spaces from remnants of the city’s modernist and industrial history. For this presentation, Urbach joins Diller and Scofidio in conversation about their experimental practice and the built environment.

$10 general; $7 SFMOMA members, students, and seniors.