Florian Idenburg, founder of the award-winning architecture firm SO-IL, and visiting faculty at AAP NYC, designs architecture that gives form and aesthetics to our world’s most pressing questions. SO-IL’s approach is often intuitive while respecting the immense responsibility architects have as “re-arrangers of atoms” and “organizers of instructions.” The office’s approach to design aims to reconnect people to their environments by agitating the public realm and empowering it with the ability to “hit you back.” SO-IL, and Idenburg, accommodate the ever-changing nature of cities and spaces by maintaining an attitude of openness and accessibility, and addresses inequality by always asking the question: who is putting the building together and for whom? Above all else, it would seem, Idenburg sees architecture as an opportunity to produce surprise and wonder. His joy and fascination with the art form are infectious and radiate from his work.
MC: What conditions in our globalized society are you most concerned with, and how do you engage with them as an architect?
FI: The biggest thing is inequality. Second is the environment. But inequality is the thing that tears our social structures apart in our civic society. Our practice deals with inequality on many levels. We have tried to develop an architecture about realizing that one can learn from those who are different from you. This can be done through layering and transparency, or by establishing relationships in which people become aware of one another. We care about this on a very fundamental level, not just as it relates to architectural design.
On the other hand, we’re getting more and more interested in labor and labor practices and the relationship between, say, technology and craft, and the process of putting a building together. Who puts it together and for whom? We’ve always tried to stay away from either working purely as emergency workers, with projects that are there only for a social cause. We are also staying far away from only being architects that work for the few clients who can afford architecture for themselves. For us, it has always been a question of making design and good design accessible to all. So, we try to work on the most extreme ends of the spectrum. We also try to show how those streams come together. I’ll leave it at that for now.
MC: Is there an emerging model for design practice specific to the urgencies you speak of? Can the two priorities of “good design” and “design for good” be equally at work and productive?
FI: Yes. I always say a good program doesn’t make it a good building, right? If you make an orphanage in Rwanda, it doesn’t make it a good building. It’s certainly a great mission to house, but it doesn’t automatically make for good architecture. I think it is important that we can discuss good architecture. After doing all the right things ethically and programmatically, you can still design a very poor building. We cannot forget that architects ultimately make form or make spaces and give form and organize material in ways that can be elegant or inelegant. We try to do both. We try to give these questions certain aesthetics. For example, we did an installation, a collaboration with Ana Prvački, the artist, for the Chicago Biennial called L’air pour l’air, which was a performance that dealt with the idea of pollution. How do you give pollution form, so to say? How can you give it aesthetics? These are the things that interest us, and it is different from: hey, how do we tackle air pollution? It is more like: how can we establish aesthetics that address some of these questions?
MC: Is this what you meant when you said that “design justified through program is born dead?”
FI: Yeah. That’s because programs change all the time. The things that I say start sounding like truisms, but program is currency that buys you space. Nobody understands space. There are very few people who really understand plans. But most people understand a program. And a program is something that translates money to space. So, you use a program as a way to buy space. You need 200 of this and 300 of this and then 10 of this, and it becomes somewhat like a shopping list. It doesn’t mean that people actually use the space that way. And anyway, what does it mean to call something a “classroom?” A classroom may have a certain set of functions, but many different things can happen there. That space can have a certain size and proportion, but it can be used for many other things as well, and over time it certainly will be used for many other things. Program sometimes only goes as far as buying you space. You still need to give that space form. Program has certainly been used in architecture a lot, if only as an excuse to make other “types” of buildings. Form used to follow function, after all. This is all to say that programs can be used to design buildings, but a program in itself is not something sacred. It’s just a currency, in my mind.
MC: I understand that your Pioneering studio began by giving each student both a structural precedent and an art curriculum precedent, basically a “program precedent…”
FI: Not so much a functional program, but a philosophical program. So an attitude. They were given a structure, yes, and then a certain approach towards design.
MC: I’m very curious about the use of precedent, both in design and in your own practice. Particularly in an age where projects, details, and things are so easily reproduced, due to open sourcing, and simply the accessibility that sites like Instagram, Pinterest, or larger magazines provide.
FI: Precedent, for us, means a building that represents something, not a building that looks a certain way. Sometimes yes, we use precedents to, for instance, see how somebody resolves form or expression. But it is different from the idea of an image or a “copy and paste.” It has much more to do with trying to understand how somebody dealt with a certain concept. For instance, how would you draw a labyrinthian structure? Certain aspects that certain buildings or structures have allow us to use them as precedents, in addition to precedents also being building materials or artworks. It can be a word or an image that has a certain type of expression because at least it represents a certain type of attitude or position. So it’s less literal, it’s more abstract or conceptual. We use other attitudes as a way to think about how they could work for our project as well.
MC: When speaking about your MoMA PS1 installation, you said that “architecture can agitate the public realm.” You mentioned that your projects often do. I noticed that architects sort of delight in that fact when they know that their building is affecting so much. I do think it is also somewhat controversial among the general public, when you put it in such terms, but I’m curious what you meant by that. Is it important to agitate as architects, and how can one do it carefully?
FI: It’s really about awareness. It’s about awareness of our world and our physical surroundings and the notion of being grounded to a site, a place, and where you are. We have seen ourselves all disappearing into our devices for quite a while now. People have become much more numb about the spaces around them. With the installation for PS1, we wanted to make an installation that could almost hit you, so to say. We wanted to make something that was very tactile, very physical, but would respond back to you. In this case, it was very physical. It became a physical game between the visitor and the space. The physicality of architecture is something we’re very interested in. This is about matter and real things, that’s why we talk about gravity and structure because we are dealing with our material and physical world. There’s a digital world and there is a physical world. We can learn a ton from the digital world, but as architects, I see our realm as the physical world. So, if a building can rub you the wrong way, so to say, it puts you in the here and now, rather than in the digital clouds. That’s what we try to do with our buildings. They try to say: hey, listen, you are here.
MC: I’m curious how newness falls into all of this. I see, in your work, something about subverting expectations or creating never-seen-befores. I’m wondering if this is an aesthetic inclination, or is it more of a design philosophy? Do we have a responsibility to the field of architecture itself to make new things?
FI: New is a very funny term. I worked in Japan for eight years. It’s very easy in Japan to say we tried something new. It sounds incredibly poetic and easily justifiable just to say, “we’re trying something new.” Perhaps it’s the same as a “good program” in that we are quick to say that it’s already good enough if it’s a good program or a new idea. Calling something a “new building” doesn’t make it a good building, in the same way one calls an orphanage in Rwanda a good building before anyone has ever seen it. “New” is often overused by somebody who cannot really define what they’re doing. I think we use it ourselves sometimes, like when we are trying to find a new approach. Of course, it doesn’t make it a good approach just because it is new. I don’t know if it’s the same as “new,” but I do think we try to do things differently, or we certainly don’t find the most conventional way to do things. We just ask, why would we do it this way and not another way? There aren’t so many materials to choose from in architecture, right? There is concrete, steel, wood, glass…there are a few more here or there, but that’s pretty much it. If you’re a cook in a kitchen and you have only five ingredients, how many variations can you possibly cook? We try very hard to find different variations within this quite limited palette to continue to produce surprise and some sort of wonder. This is our interest, it is also our joy. We think that it makes buildings more intriguing and fascinating.
MC: In a previous interview you were asked what interests you in designing arts and cultural venues. In your response, you said “There’s a certain freedom in designing these spaces, because they’re built mostly to offer rather than extract something.” What are other examples of spaces that extract or spaces that offer?
FI: What I meant by that is that there are two building types: the buildings people build to make money and the buildings people build after they have money. The buildings built in order to make money try to spend as little as possible on the building, or just enough to take out as much money as possible for themselves to spend elsewhere. Then you have people or organizations or states or governments that have money, and they want to spend it on the building in the place itself. So, are you making a space that is there to ultimately subtract money out or is it there because you want to give back to the state? Public buildings typically do that. Our tax money is given to invest in a certain space, but a private house might also do that. If somebody decides to build their own private home, they’re going to invest in it in a way that a developer likely wouldn’t. These are very different ways in which to think about design and they determine how values are being judged, how things are being evaluated, and simply how design decisions are being made. If you build commercially, the question becomes, what will give us the best return on this thing? Whereas the other option is, what is the most wonderful thing we can afford to put here? These are completely different ways of thinking about how to make space. One would think the latter is more fun, but I suppose the differences don’t make one nicer than the other. There are difficult clients on either end. But you understand the difference between how you have to think of materials and how you have to think about design literally, on either end.
MC: You are collaborating with Pioneer Works for your Pioneering studio this semester at AAP. Did this idea of extracting and offering influence your approach to the studio?
FI: Yes and no. I like working with real institutions. I like to bring students into the conversation with real questions that they might face at some point in the world, where there is a real respondent. I don’t like studios that are sponsored by somebody, where students end up working for the organization. But I like an organization to host the students and to host a conversation. It being “the integrated building” studio, I wanted to do something that deals with a complex building with a multifaceted program to respond to. This idea of structure was very important and the structure of Pioneering Works is an incredible and beautiful timber structure. I wanted to choose a site we could easily go to with the students, the site is right off the ferry. So it was a lot of practical things on top of knowing the person who’s running the place now. I knew we could have a real conversation there. I like the program too, because the program is modeled after Black Mountain College, which speaks all about the integration of the different arts disciplines. We get to ask: how do you bring science and the arts and music and dance and everything together? Through a sort of Bauhausian idea we could really get at this idea of integration, especially with Pioneer Works being a multidisciplinary organization themselves. It is also a metaphor in that sense. The integrated building studio allows us to ask: how do we deal with an organization that believes in integration? Through bringing things together we can get to new ideas.
MC: You’ve taught for a number of years. How do you more generally gauge underlying or mounting attitudes in young people in order to prioritize specific curricula for studios?
FI: It’s funny, because when I started teaching I was 27, or 26 even. I taught at Princeton with SAANA and some of the students were older than me. I was TA-ing with Sejima and Nishizawa, but they never came, so I ended up being the one teaching the studio. It meant that I always felt that I was the same generation as the students. Even now, obviously we are some 15 years further, but I don’t feel I’ve gotten any older. Of course I did and you guys stayed the same age. So I realized at some point that it was not just my own generation anymore that I was teaching and that there were other interests on the table.
I don’t have an exact answer to say how we gauge exactly what’s going on, but obviously, we listen. We have a lot of conversations with the students and we learn a lot from them, in addition to having a very young staff in our office. I also have two teenage daughters who will tell me very quickly when I’m not understanding what’s happening anymore. In fact, I learn the most from my daughters, they may even be a little bit ahead of the students now. But really I think it’s just about keeping your eyes open and listening. Jing and I both teach and we speak a lot, we exchange a lot, and we have a lot of people that are teaching even just within our office. So we’re very well aware of what’s going on in the schools and what people are actually discussing and talking about.
At the same time, there are some things that seem to remain constant. There are certain aspects of architecture within society and between generations that don’t really change, no matter how the discussion changes. We are always asking: how do you define architecture and how do you define what the role of architectural education is? But I still believe that architecture is about how to put a building together and how to make space. This is why I like to talk about structure because it seems to be the most stable thing. Gravity is the one thing that doesn’t change, right? Everything is changing constantly, but gravity has remained pretty much as it always has. And so the question becomes: how do you calibrate the things that are almost permanent, with the things that are rapidly changing? As an artist, you need to know more than the current discourse, you also have to know the things that will remain the same for a very long time to come. These days, specifically with the discussions about sustainability, it is really about understanding life cycles and, more generally, just periods of time. That ability to manage and understand time or times is quite important for an architect.
MC: What do you notice when you look at the architecture around you, particularly as you work around the world? Does the architecture speak volumes about this period of time, the 2020’s?
FI: There are a few very pressing issues today that, in some way, architecture is responding to and could lead toward, all of which come down to justice. The largest issues are racial justice, social justice at a more global scale, and environmental justice. As an architect, it is important to have an awareness of our role within all of it. Ultimately, we decide where certain materials arrive, where they are to exist in the world. We are basically rearranging the atoms of the world, and it has a direct impact on both social and environmental issues. This awareness is really sinking in throughout the fields of architecture, and so you cannot be at liberty anymore while being ignorant about certain things. There is so much more information available now. Zaha Hadid may have said that it is not the architect’s responsibility to think about the stadium workers, but I think it is something we cannot be ignorant about, meaning we cannot say that we didn’t know after the fact. We cannot hide from the fact that there are prevailing issues. If you see what is happening in Europe at this moment regarding materials and sustainability, it is effectively changing the discipline to a level that certain materials won’t be available to us anymore. We will have to completely adjust the way we work because we know our impact on the earth. With the sheer amount of information available and the ability to track and represent information allowing us to see much more clearly, there’s no disguise anymore. There’s still misinformation, and there’s not “total information,” but there is so much more of it and it means we have to adjust the way we design.
MC: This is an open-ended one. How do you design future culture?
FI: Perhaps it has mostly to do with intuition. It is the culture that is changing, so how do you design for something that is evolving? I think it is reflected in our attitude, which has to do with openness and allowing things to shift while certain things stay the same. But it is a big question, how do you allow for things to transform and for things to be taken over and occupied and reinterpreted? A lot of the things we do are very intuitive. Sometimes we are just fascinated by something. We see something, pick it up, explore it. This I cannot explain.
MC: Hearing that you have two teenage daughters, makes me think of this. I’m wondering how you find balance in your life while also being invested in this incredibly time consuming profession?
FI: They’re fun. COVID helped in that way alone, just getting to be home so much. Time management is really so important. The most important thing that I’ve learned in architecture is to know when to worry. Projects and processes take so long. We try to simulate this with the students in our studio by bringing them through the different phases such as Design Development and Construction Documents. When worry about what? The problem is, we are super inefficient as architects in the sense that we want to see everything on day one. Unfortunately, technology allows us to resolve things way too early for them to be truly resolved and so these days our clients want to see everything on day one as well. We are starting to think we shouldn’t even make drawings anymore and we should just start building. These days the whole building gets decided on the construction site. Everything that you drew, everything that you figured, everything that you puzzled, estimated, whatever… as soon as you start construction, none of it holds true anymore. You get differences between drawings and reality, the materials are suddenly too expensive, the guy gets stuck with his truck, the client wants something else. Don’t worry too early. This is our strategy anyway. And I guess it’s the same with our daughters, we just aren’t worrying too early, and maybe things are going to be fine.
MC: Great advice.
FI: It’s a very simple one.