9 Chapel and 144 Vanderbilt

In Jacques Tati’s movie Mon oncle (1958), the modern house – starkly geometric and reliant on consumer gadgets – is juxtaposed with the traditional French apartment building with its many charming idiosyncrasies. The Arpel family is enslaved to mechanization (electrical garage doors; appliance-filled kitchens) whereas the benign uncle of the film’s title inhabits a wondrous mini-high rise with circulation alternating between interior and exterior space and resultant opportunities to see, be seen, and interact with neighbors.

The work of Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu (SO – IL) may at first glance appear to belong to a cool Arpel lineage of Modernism. Many of their buildings and installations photograph as meticulous membranes, translucent if glass or fabric, perforated if of weightier material. In person, however, critical projects such as the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis (THE PLAN 096) are revealed to be as much social condensers as they are bespoke architectural envelopes. SO – IL works to enable communal and therefore political agendas in addition to, if not supersede, esthetic criteria.

SO – IL’s office is located in Brooklyn, New York City, and its principals, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, have long resided in the borough. Working internationally, they are closely attentive to Brooklyn, to issues of development and gentrification, and to the potential of new forms of residential architecture within current financial and planning parameters. Indeed, SO – IL’s success in the Brooklyn housing market is rooted in an analysis of parameters and code, a very pragmatic approach whereby each dimension, of solid and void, counts in the realization of three-dimensional building.

SO – IL has to-date built three inventive buildings for
Tankhouse, the Brooklyn-based real estate developer. The first building, at 450 Warren Street close...

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