(upbeat music) - From the beginning, I was going to be an artist.

Ric was already an architect.

I was kind of that provocateur.

And Ric was a kind of interpreter.

And our studio was always this cross-disciplinary studio between art and performance, theater and architecture.

But the one thing that was common was rethinking the conventions of everyday space.

- [Commentator] Their work from the start has tried to look at the spatial dimension of everyday life and the equipment, the furniture of everyday life, and the way they enable our habits.

Their work asks us to question those habits by disturbing the space in which those habits take place.

For example, domestic space.

Who sits at the head of the table?

Who irons the shirts?

(crowd shouting indistinctly) Issues of hygiene, issues of gender roles.

- [Narrator] Centered on the pad.

- [Commentator] Themes of surveillance.

- [Narrator] With the mirror in her top drawer.

- They've done objects ranging from glasses where you can have your vodka and your cigarette at the same time, or your pills and your water at the same time, to medicine cabinets on the one side or implements of pleasure on the other side or implements of pain, to chairs where the vanity mirror, you know, confronts you as you sit down.

The thing of design is trying to solve a social problem.

The designs of Diller and Scofidio often just point out a social problem.