(b Buenos Aires, 1945). American architect and theorist of Argentine birth. She received her Diploma of Architecture at the University of Buenos Aires in 1967 and studied further in Paris at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Centre du Recherche d’Urbanisme (1967–9). She moved to New York in 1971. From 1976 Agrest taught at Cooper Union, New York, and at Columbia, Princeton and Yale universities. In 1980 she went into partnership with her husband, Mario Gandelsonas (b 1938), in the firm A & G Development Consultants Inc., in New York. She also formed her own firm, Diana Agrest, Architect, in New York. Agrest was deeply involved in theoretical research, and was a Fellow at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York, from 1972 to 1984. She was strongly influenced by semiotics and developed the idea that architecture can refer beyond itself, discussed particularly in her essay on architecture and film (1991). She also argued for a contextual and integrative approach to architecture, as seen in her master plan (1986) for Deep Ellum, Dallas, which proposes a development for a section of downtown Dallas, integrating retail, office and residential spaces. The visual concerns of the plan are classically orientated towards symmetry and clarity. Surfaces are characterized by unornamented planarity. This severity also appeared in Agrest’s designs for ‘Shingle–Schinkel holiday house’ (1981–2). The shingle siding and roof refer to the traditions of the projected East Hampton location, and they enliven the surfaces of the otherwise severe cubic forms, which include two towers. Agrest and Gandelsonas also designed office and apartment interiors and furniture. These interiors (e.g. Park Avenue apartment, c. 1990) can be somewhat playful, combining materials such as pink marble, granite and exotic woods, yet they are still geometrically severe.