#so-il

Breathe – MINI Living, Milan, Italy - SO-IL

"Common Thread"

Since the foundation of their Brooklyn-based office SO-IL in 2008 Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg have focused on the design of residential buildings as antithesis to the monotonous and over-regulated housing of the present day. With their designs the architects seek to reintroduce communal spaces, open layouts and thus the opportunity for inhabitants to interact rather than isolate. As a sort of retrospective of the last ten years of restless architectural production SO-IL recently published „In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today“ with Lars Müller Publishers, a comprehensive and extensively illustrated overview of their projects featuring a wealth of plans and photographs by Iwan Baan and Naho Kubota.

In her preface to the volume Jing Liu discusses in-depth SO-IL’s historical paragons and sheds light on how the monotony and lack of community in housing came about. At the same time she interlaces positive examples from the past like the traditional Chinese siheyuan courtyard, the Japanese engawa/streets in the air or the Smithsons’ Golden Lane Estate which all share communal outside spaces, few to no corridors and the overall insight that housing entails more than simply providing shelter and privacy.

As Florian Idenburg states, one of the core problem areas of housing in general and in the US in particular is the corridor and whose cancellation is the topic of Nicolas Kemper’s essay: his personal experience with the double-loaded corridor prompted him to look deeper into the history of corridors, the building regulations and its facilitation of the corridor. Consequently, he pleads for a fundamental reform of building codes and by the example of SO-IL’s 450 Warren project shows that it is indeed possible to avoid corridors altogether.

Amant Performing Arts Center

Brooklyn NY

SO-IL

SO-IL

“I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery.”--Luis Barragán 

Artists need support and we need artists. The noted collector and patron, Lonti Ebers, established Amant last year to provide an exhibition space and residency program for contemporary artists. Located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the center designed by the innovative firm SO-IL Studio is an impressive addition to our arts community in NYC.

Their current show, SIREN (some poetics), curated by poet and writer Quinn Latimer is currently on display, and offers a cerebral exploration into meanings, connections, and borders. Latimer writes:

“SIREN (some poetics) examines what lies beyond such borders and binaries—ancestral, technological, epistemological, literary, patriarchal, corporeal, emotional or otherwise,” she continues. “Devoted to the voice [...] and the avatar-like bodies we build and break around it, the exhibition considers technologies of myth and mouth, earth and alarm, gender and poetics.”

Amant’s programming, led by Director and Chief Curator Ruth Estévez, also includes artist residencies and a learning center providing a wholistic and international approach to supporting the arts...one that is focused on connecting artistic practices in a multi-disciplinary fashion with other fields of knowledge and experience. 

North Fork Residence, 

East Marion, Southold, Suffolk County, New York, United States,

By SO – IL in Collaboration with Shenton Architects,