Florian Idenburg

Florian Idenburg is a cofounding partner of New York-based architecture firm SO – IL with Jing Liu. His practice spans architecture, installation, exhibition, and furniture design. In addition to being an expert on structural and spatial form, he is an accomplished writer and educator. 

Idenburg was educated in the Netherlands and trained as a practitioner in Japan. His aesthetic sensibility and approach to architecture is a synthesis of Dutch and Japanese traditions. From 2000 to 2007, he worked at Tokyo-based SANAA, the firm of Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. At SANAA, he oversaw the design and development of the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art (2006) and the New Museum (2007). 

Founded in 2008 by Idenburg and Liu, SO – IL has grown into a world-renowned architecture firm with public and private clients spread around the globe, from France and South Korea to the United States and Mexico. Their work is celebrated for its sensitivity, intellectual rigor, and imaginative approach to solving challenges of the built environment. Idenburg brings playful intuition and unbounded energy to the professional practice of architecture. Idenburg earned a Master of Science in Architectural Engineering from the Delft University of Technology.

Academic Research/Specialty Areas

  • Architectural practice 

Related News

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

  • Emerging Voices, Architectural League of New York (2013)
  • Charlotte Köhler Prize, Prince Bernhard Culture Fund (2010) 
  • MoMA PS1 Young Architects (2009)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

  • Beeline, Lisbon, Portugal (2020)
  • Into the Hedge, Columbus, IN (2019)
  • L'air pour l'air, Chicago (2017)
  • Blueprint at Storefront, cocurated with Jing Liu and Sebastiaan Bremer, New York City (2015)
  • Spiky, Beijing, China (2013)

Publications (Selected)

  • Human(s) Work (Taschen, 2020)
  • Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Ilias Papageorgiou, "Solid Objectives: Order, Edge, Aura" (Lars Müller Publishers, 2017)

Selected Work

  • Square facade of a modern building.

    Amant Art Campus, Brooklyn, NY, (2021). Amant is an arts campus spread across three blocks of rapidly changing, industrial North Brooklyn.

  • Childredn playing sports on a playground, apartment-style building in background.

    Las Americas Social Housing, León, Mexico (2021). Las Americas is a scalable model for urban cohabitation resolving issues of cost, quality, and loss of urban density.

  • The exterior of a small architectural intervention on the interior of a museum.

    Beeline, Lisbon, Portugal (2020). Beeline is an architectural intervention that occupies the entirety of the Amanda Levete-designed MAAT museum in Lisbon.

  • An alley between two concrete buildings with a lit tower structure in the center.

    Breathe – MINI Living, Milan, Italy (2017). Breathe is a housing prototype for the future living environment. A modular metal frame forms the home’s basic structure with a flexible, light-permeable outer skin of purifying fabric.

  • A white courtyard awning structure casting shadows on the ground.

    Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA (2016). Our design amplifies the Museum's mission for all visitors to be students, redefining the museum from a closed 'jewel box' to an accessible platform for the arts.

  • A white building covered in a permeable netting material.

    Kukje Gallery—K3, Seoul, South Korea (2012). Kukje Gallery is a contemporary art complex that is committed to presenting the work of the most current and significant Korean and international contemporary artists.

  • A book on a white surface.

    Solid Objectives: Order, Edge, Aura (2017). A visual and textual manifesto, the book introduces our attitude towards the design and realization of architecture in an interconnected environment.

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