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Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio have explored the book as an architectural medium to an extent unmatched by any other contemporary American firm: the frenetic spreads of their Flesh: Architectural Probes (1994); the mysterious film stills embedded within the double-folded pages of Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio (2003); the technical dramas revealed behind glossy photographs in Lincoln Center: Inside Out (2013); the eccentric “landscape” format of The High Line (with James Corner/Field Operations, 2015); and even Blue Hour (with Matthew Monteith, 2016), a “short film intended to be viewed on paper.”

It was this legacy of bookmaking that made me jump at the opportunity to work as design and editorial lead for the first comprehensive monograph on Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), published in February. The double-bound format—a pair of structurally conjoined volumes that contain more than four decades of the studio’s cross-disciplinary work—is a far from obvious response to the conventional demand for such a book. This should come as no surprise for DS+R, which has long questioned professional norms. Following the death of Scofidio last month, Architecture, Not Architecture also stands as the self-portrait of a collaboration that has profoundly enriched and expanded architectural practice since Liz and Ric began working together in 1979.

DS+R authored many books in the decades after Flesh, but it declined invitations to create a monograph. One was deemed essential only after the firm had grown to more than a hundred employees, gained two partners—Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin—and completed projects on five continents. Various ideas were explored, beginning in 2015, but none had taken root. The iteration I began working with after joining the team in 2022 was a single, phone book–size tome that arranged the studio’s work in reverse sequence, from the present to 1981. But this concept proved to be a misfire. Browsing felt like wading through a dense scrapbook, its order merely the incidental chronology of the practice.

Creating something authentic to DS+R required treating the monograph as a critical project in its own right. Alongside Diller, Scofidio, and their communications team, we catalogued the inert conventions of the genre and proposed alternatives. Valedictory essays by historians and critics were replaced by conversations with peers. Rather than publish lofty mission statements, we envisioned short texts that mixed polemic, reportage, and reflection. Cutting slick photographs of completed buildings made space for collections of drawings, ephemera, and experiments. Instead of a standard portfolio, we sought a “portable archive”—a book that encourages exploration rather than straightforward reading.

The form of a book defines how its content is read: function follows format. Typically, an editor starts with a concept for content—designers worry about form. But, in this case, the authors are designers themselves, and form and content had to develop in lockstep. For several months, we made dozens of printed and bound mock-ups to test ideas. An alphabetical dictionary of DS+R? (Too arbitrary.) A set of critical themes? (Too curated.) A conventional portfolio sorted by programs? (Too obvious.) But one fruitful idea proposed a merciless slice through the studio’s body of work along a disciplinary fault line: “Architecture” and “Not Architecture.”

Para-Site, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989. Installation view, entry surveillance feed. Photo © Diller Scofidio + Renfro

On its face, the concept was counterintuitive for a cross-disciplinary studio like DS+R. Why adhere to a distinction that holds little weight for the firm? On the one hand, the dichotomy played up early criticisms of the studio’s installations and theatrical works as anything but “real architecture”; on the other, it recalled the dialectical logic of many of those same projects. For example, His/Hers (1993) demonstrated that undermining a binary paradoxically required restating it. There, design critically destabilized the paradigms of gender, privacy, and domesticity by transforming their representation. Similarly, the book’s form needed to counteract the assumed disciplinary certainty of the concept. Liz was intrigued, but Ric was skeptical. In his view, all the work is architectural. “I have never believed in border policing,” he reflects in the book, “and don’t understand why anyone adheres to disciplinary boundaries.”

The turning point came with the most complex mock-up I had ever created: a volume that could be turned inside out, like a reversible jacket. It was a monograph modeled after Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—a single book with two personalities: “architecture” and “not architecture.” It was promising, but manufacturing a reversible book wouldn’t be simple.

Alternatives quickly followed, such as two books attached by a pliant wrapper, akin to a Jacob’s ladder toy (but this was too flimsy). Later, we experimented with binding two volumes to a shared, folding hardcover. The mock-up, made by hand from paper, chipboard, glue, and gaffer’s tape, felt robust. It would be technically challenging, but it was theoretically viable.

Fortunately, we had the support of our publishing partner to see this model through. Phaidon’s long history of producing ambitious and innovative books meant they were undaunted by the complexities of our proposal. Our graphic design collaborators, 2x4, Inc., leveraged their expertise to solve formidable typographic and structural challenges. The double-bound format animates an archive of DS+R’s work by instigating a kind of reading against the grain of its interdisciplinarity. Although projects in each volume are organized chronologically, an indexing system of “crossovers”—cross-references that point to projects sharing a critical theme or site—offers readers multiple paths through the content. Likewise, panoramic, four-page-wide images periodically reconnect the halves, suturing the two sides in moments that transcend chronological and conventional logics, such as the Mile-Long Opera (2018) on the High Line or the Fashion Week pavilion (2010) at Lincoln Center.

There are no formal portraits of the partners in Architecture, Not Architecture, but Scofidio makes appearances in pictures of the early work (as does Diller). In one image, he is seen reflected in a mirror, seated in the “Vanity Chair” of the withDrawing Room installation (1987); in another, he is visible in silhouette, standing behind the metal screen of Gate (1984), the entrance to that year’s Art on the Beach exhibition. Scofidio sometimes likened himself to a humble “troubleshooter” who hunkered down to find the best solution. Diller + Scofidio’s first installation, Traffic, in 1981, saw Ric using a surveyor’s transit to plot a grid of 2,000-plus traffic cones in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. From 2000 to 2019, he led the DS+R team to transform the puzzle of the High Line into one of New York’s greatest public spaces. Ric’s humility makes it fitting that he is only visible behind the work. For him, the pleasure of seeing a project realized was reward enough. His work spans both volumes—it’s all architecture, after all.