The award for architectural creativity went to the New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, whose specialty is the combination of architecture with the visual and dramatic arts. They not only design traditional buildings, but also create temporary and permanent installations, multimedia works, and printed publications. The workshop widely uses new materials, technologies and construction methods, which are borrowed from a variety of areas: the military-industrial complex, aircraft and medicine.
In 1999 Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio became the first architects to receive the MacArthur Foundation Award.
Also this time, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Prize, among others, was also awarded to architect Richard Gluckman for his interior design projects and environmental designer Ned Kahn for landscape design. Sergio A. Palleroni, an architect and lecturer at the University of Texas, has received a Special Jury Prize for his outreach to developing countries, teaching ten weeks around the world on sustainable building and sustainable design.
