“When I graduated from architecture school [at The Cooper Union], it was never with the intention of becoming an architect; I wanted to work in space,” says self-proclaimed “outsider” architect Elizabeth Diller, who also has a background in art. As the sole female partner at the New York–based AD100 firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro , she is now one of the leading women in architecture, internationally. “I think I am a beneficiary of the women’s movement, while I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting myself,” she admits. “I was able to fluidly start my own practice, with Ric [Scofidio], but we were definitely seen as outcasts because we were doing independent artwork.” The husband-and-wife duo didn’t care too much, though, that both the art and architecture disciplines thought of them as outsiders, and today, Diller has kept true to her rebellious roots, declaring, “We’re even bolder and crazier than before.”

Set to open this April, The Shed, in New York's newest neighborhood, Hudson Yards, and connected to the elevated High Line park, is a cultural center with attached tower by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, lead architect, and Rockwell Group, collaborating architect.

It shows. Her firm was propelled to international fame for its design (with James Corner Field Operations and AD100 Piet Oudolf ) of the High Line, a 1.5-mile-long elevated public park that snakes up the west side of Manhattan along an abandoned train line. Since completion of phase one of the urban park in 2009, copycat versions have popped up in dissident contexts across the globe, controversy around its spurring of neighborhood gentrification is ongoing, and phase four is wrapping up soon. DS+R is now a household name and designing some of the most innovative (and, as proven, controversial), cultural projects around the globe, including The Shed and the Museum of Modern Art expansion , both in New York, and the London Center for Music .

A rendering shows London's new Music Center, designed by the New York–based firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Despite the high-profile architectural commissions, Diller maintains her artistic sensibilities, and independent projects are still a large part of the firm’s repertoire. This past summer, she produced The Mile-Long Opera along the aforementioned High Line, featuring a performance of 1,000 singers with music composed by David Lang. “I consider it at close to the Gesamtkunstwerk as I have ever come,” she rejoices. “It’s a consciousness that we have as crossover people—I wouldn’t say artists or architects specifically, but a consciousness that’s self-aware about space in the city and performance and the everyday and looking at it through a different lens and bringing all of that together to produce an experience.”

A rendering of the exterior of the expanded Museum of Modern Art in New York, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and set to open this year.

Its this kind of throw-away-the-rule-book mentality that Diller has tried to impart on the next generation of architects as well. As an educator since the 1980s, she has not seen the equal split of the sexes in architecture change much in recent years; however, outside of academia, women are often lost along the pipeline to the principal level. Beyond running a practice sensitive to architects starting and raising families, being conscious of equality of pay and opportunities, and giving importance to mental health, she “tries to set an example being passionate about the work at different scales and in different media,” she says, “being a risk-taker.”

Currently a professor at Princeton, she explains, “I like to teach not what I know, but what I don’t know . . . . What I want to impart to the students is that possibility that you’re not there to receive someone else’s hand-me-down programs: You can make them up yourself.” She pauses for effect, then laughs: “I just basically like to destabilize students and screw with their minds and make them doubt everything that they thought they knew about architecture.” And will more multidisciplinary thinkers come out of it? “I hope,” she affirms.