Cocktails & Conversation: SO–IL

Cocktails & Conversation is a series of dialogues about design that joins an architect with a critic, journalist, curator, or architectural historian to discuss current design issues. For this program, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, Founding Principals of SO–IL, will discuss culture and time with Nicolas Kemper over a custom-crafted cocktail. Founded in 2008, SO–IL (Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu) won the MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program Award in 2010. 

Speakers:
Florian Idenburg, Int'l Assoc. AIA, Principal, SO–IL
Jing Liu, AIA, Principal, SO–IL

Moderator: 
Nicolas Kemper, Publisher, New York Review of Architecture 

About the Speakers:
Florian Idenburg is an internationally renowned Dutch architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO–IL in 2008 together with Jing Liu. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects as Kukje Gallery and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis as well as Amant in Brooklyn. Idenburg has a strong intuition for the orchestration of form, material, and light, and enjoys developing projects to a level where those elements become places for people to experience and use. He combines a hands-on approach with a theoretical drive, sharing this creative spirit with clients, collaborators, and students. A frequent speaker at institutions around the world, he has taught at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, and Princeton University and is currently Professor of the Practice at Cornell University.

Jing Liu has been practicing for more than 15 years working on a wide range of projects both in the US and abroad. Through building practice and interdisciplinary research projects, Liu has led SO–IL in the engagement with the socio-political issues of contemporary cities — in projects like the Artists Loft North Omaha and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Cleveland. Her projects range from artistic collaborations with contemporary choreographers and visual artists to master plan and major public realm design in cities like Melbourne and Indianapolis. Liu has taught at institutions such as Princeton and Columbia, and has written on a number of topics, including housing, design culture, and female practices. She has contributed to publications by publishers such as Lars Muller, Carnegie Museum of Art and Inventory Press, the Design Museum, and the Avery Review by the Office of Publications at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Nicolas Kemper is the Publisher of New York Review of Architecture (NYRA). He is trained as an architect, having worked for architecture and engineering firms in New York and Berlin and received his MArch at the Yale School of Architecture, where he also co-founded the student publication Paprika!. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts and at the Kean School of Public Architecture, and is a volunteer tour guide at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He edited the newsletter pulp and has written pieces for publications including Curbed, AA Files, and Urban Omnibus. He has also written extensively for NYRA, including a column where he reviews the buildings of other publishers, and one piece particularly relevant to this conversation, "Cancel the Corridor."