World-Renowned Architectural Team to be Featured at School of Architecture and Planning Event

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The world-renowned architectural team of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, the first architects to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, will be the special guests of Atelier 2001, the annual showcase and open house of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, to be held April 6 on UB's South (Main Street) Campus.

Diller and Scofidio will lead off the activities with a slide lecture at 5:30 p.m. in 148 Diefendorf Hall. Following the lecture, participants will view exhibits by students in architecture and urban planning that will be on display throughout Crosby Hall. At 7:30 p.m., donors to the school will be recognized at a ceremony to be held in 301 Crosby.

Atelier, which will be free of charge and open to the public, is sponsored by Lauer Manguso Architects and the Buffalo chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students.

The Diller + Scofidio approach to architecture, wrote critic Aaron Betsky, "moves beyond traditional conceptions of what buildings should be, and is the purest form of modernism we have today."

The pair's award-winning work includes a stunning and disturbing set design for a ballet that incorporates the sensations inherent in a choreographer's schizophrenia, an installation that is a troubling paean to the American lawn, an unromantic robotic installation that replicates "life" in bureaucratic spaces and a wondrous "floating" oblong building that is virtually invisible beneath a constant cloud-cover of its own creation.