In a city where density often dictates form, Amant, designed by SO – IL, offers an alternative architectural proposition that privileges fragmentation over monumentality and permeability over enclosure. Located in the industrial periphery of North Brooklyn, this cultural campus occupies three separate blocks, threading itself into the fabric of a rapidly evolving neighborhood. Rather than asserting itself as a singular object, Amant is a spatial and civic strategy, a constellation of volumes and voids that test the role of the art institution in the contemporary city.
Amant Art Campus Technical Information
- Architects1-15: SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU (SO–IL)
- Location: Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Area: 1,951 m2 | 21,000 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year: 2014 – 2021
- Photographs: © Iwan Baan
Central to Amant’s design is the idea of an urban oasis, a space where the pace of art-making can slow to allow experimentation and meaningful reflection.
– SO–IL Architects
Amant Art Campus Photographs
Urban Fragmentation and the Notion of Contextual Dialogue
Amant is not a building—it is a distributed condition, a spatial field dispersed across a tight urban grid. Situated in a context marked by warehouses, garages, and traces of industrial infrastructure, the project engages in a dialogue with its surroundings by mimicking and adapting. The architects resist the traditional typology of the sealed cultural building. Instead, the project manifests as a sequence of volumes and open spaces, inserted between and around existing structures.
This dispersed strategy enables Amant to act as a kind of urban filter—porous to the neighborhood, yet specific in its interior functions. The insertion of multiple entry points, alleys, and interstitial courtyards creates opportunities for incidental encounters and unprogrammed use, softening the boundary between institution and public. In a context where privatization of urban space is the norm, Amant’s configuration feels generous and radical.
Spatial Ethos and Curated Movement
At the heart of Amant is a spatial ethic oriented toward slowness and reflection. The project is not organized around a singular axis or procession but through a network of lateral connections and nested sequences. Movement through the site is non-linear, deliberately choreographed to encourage exploration rather than efficiency.
The campus accommodates a hybrid program—artist studios, exhibition galleries, a performance space, administrative offices, and a café—each located in one of four primary buildings. Between these, courtyards and narrow passageways guide visitors in and out of light, sound, and social atmospheres. This interplay between architecture and experience allows the visitor to drift, fostering solitude and social exchange conditions. The architecture does not assert itself over the artwork or the visitor but facilitates a range of tempos, modes of engagement, and intensities of presence.
Amant Art Campus Material Language
SO–IL’s material choices in Amant articulate a deliberate ambiguity, offering a subdued yet nuanced language that resists overt expression. The buildings are formed in cast-in-place concrete, shaped by profoundly textured form liners that animate otherwise blank surfaces. Bricks are subtly rotated out of plane, introducing a shadow play that recalls masonry traditions while abstracting them. Galvanized steel bars veil certain facades, filtering views and reflecting the changing sky. This material palette, while modest, lends the project a rich tactile dimension.
From a distance, the buildings appear almost mute—anonymity as urban camouflage. However, a different reading emerges upon approach: craft, detail, and attention to surface take precedence. This architectural language is not one of spectacle but of proximity and encounter—it rewards the visitor who slows down. In this sense, materiality becomes a medium for contemplation, echoing the institutional mission to provide a space for unhurried artistic production and appreciation.
Cultural Typology and Institutional Flexibility
Amant reconsiders the cultural campus as a non-hierarchical ensemble. Each building within the compound houses a distinct gallery, differentiated in scale, light quality, and infrastructural specificity. This strategy allows the campus to accommodate diverse artistic practices, from immersive installations to intimate screenings. More importantly, it invites a flexible curatorial approach, where programs evolve and spaces are reconfigured without compromising the coherence of the whole.
Beyond programmatic adaptability, Amant is a test case in rethinking the cultural institution’s relationship to the city. It challenges the image of the autonomous museum-as-object and instead proposes an embedded, open, and responsive typology. As an “urban oasis,” it provides a retreat not through isolation but through the careful modulation of exposure and shelter. In doing so, it contributes to an ongoing conversation about architecture’s role in fostering inclusive, experimental, and civic spaces for art.
Amant Art Campus Plans
Image Gallery
About SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU (SO–IL)
SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU (SO–IL) believes in open, thoughtful, and humanistic architecture that creates meaningful cultural and social impact. The studio is dedicated to designing transformative arts and civic projects that enrich communities and the environment.
Founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu met in Tokyo in 2001 and formed SO–IL in New York City in 2008 with a vision of a global practice that merges craft and detail-oriented construction with intellectual rigor and a distinct aesthetic. The studio of skilled and committed architects is based in New York and Amsterdam and has cultivated a diverse international portfolio of critically acclaimed projects. Staying true to its founding ideology, SO–IL continues to play a leading role in the wider dialogue of architecture today through building, education, and publishing.
Credits and Additional Notes
Executive Team: Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Kevin Lamyuktseung, Ted Baab
- Design Team: Pietro Pagliaro, Grace Lee, Sanger Clark, Lucia Sanchez-Ramirez, Álvaro Gómez-Sellés, Kristen Too, Sophie Nichols, Christopher Riley, Alexandre Hamlyn, Regina Teng, Etienne Vallat, Marisa Musing, Tyler Mauri, Julie Perrone, Mario Serrano, Diego Fernandez, Yuanjun Summer Liu, John Chow
Client: Lonti Ebers
Project Management: Paratus Group
Structural Engineering: Silman Associates
MEP Engineering: CES Engineering, Plus Group Engineering
Lighting Design: Buro Happold Engineering
Cladding Consultant: Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Civil Engineering: Bohler Engineering
Expediter: J. Callahan Consulting, Inc.
Acoustics / AV / Security: Harvey Marshall Berling Associates
Concrete Consultant: Reginald Hough Associates
Geotechnical Engineering: Langan Engineering, PMT Laboratories, Inc.
Landscape Design: Future Green
Graphic Design: Linked by Air
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