In collaboration with AMAG, Amant hosts a launch event for LB 17 SO – IL AMANT, the seventeenth title from AMAG’s LONG BOOK series. The publication features essays written by Amant’s founder and CEO, Lonti Ebers; the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, Martino Stierli; and architect and co-founder of MONADNOCK, Job Floris.
The essays in the publication reflect on Amant’s architecture through SO – IL’s approach, process, and material choices. SO – IL developed Amant’s architecture at the urban scale and weaved it into the fabric of East Williamsburg, a neighborhood characterized by a mix of small businesses, workshops, night clubs, and storage facilities. In response to this environment, Amant comprises four buildings interspersed with a variety of public spaces, among them garden courtyards, a bookstore, and a café. Its architectural structures are simple and direct in nature. Informed by the industrial character of the neighborhood, the foundation is made of unusual materials for a cultural organization, including concrete brick and metal.
On this occasion, we co-organize together with architects SO – IL a detailed walkthrough of the four buildings that comprise our campus at 3:30 pm. Then, at 5 pm, we are joined by the Assistant Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, Evangelos Kotsioris, who will give a presentation and moderate a conversation between Amant’s founder and CEO, Lonti Ebers; architect and co-founder of SO – IL, Florian Idenburg and AMAG’s founder and chief editor, Ana Leal. A reception in Amant’s residency will follow the conversation.
This event is co-organized with SO – IL and AMAG, and is open to the public. Books will be available for sale.
Lonti Ebers is a longtime art collector and supporter of contemporary art. She conceptualized and built Amant New York to offer studio residencies and exhibition galleries that would encourage artistic development and experimentation free of the financial burden and administrative confines that typically accompany art practice in New York. Amant’s program focuses on innovative exhibitions of contemporary visual art, media and performance art, and discursive events.
Lonti has served on the boards of several museums in both the US and abroad and is currently a trustee of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she chairs the committee of Media and Performance. She has funded an endowment for exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and sits on the European Committee of the Tate Gallery in London.
Lonti’s vision extends beyond New York. In 2020 she launched a dynamic residency program in the province of Siena, Italy. It was the culmination of a multi-year development and restoration project of apartments, studios, and communal spaces harmoniously embedded in a picturesque medieval Tuscan village. Together, the Siena and New York programs reflect Lonti’s passion for cultivating creative spaces that inspire and nurture artistic talent worldwide.
Florian Idenburg is an internationally renowned architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO–IL in New York in 2008 together with Jing Liu. A thoughtful partner with a joyous demeanor, Florian pursues innovation through collaboration. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects including Kukje Gallery and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, as well as the Amant arts campus in Brooklyn. His strength lies in generating imaginative ideas and transforming those into real-world spaces and objects.
Florian has a strong intuition for the orchestration of form, material, and light, and he enjoys developing projects to a level where those elements become places for people to experience and use. He combines a hands-on approach with a theoretical drive, sharing this creative spirit with clients, collaborators, and students.
Evangelos Kotsioris is Assistant Curator in Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Among other projects, he has recently co-organized the exhibitions Architecture Now: New York, New Publics (2023), The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985 (2022), and Reuse, Renew, Recycle: Recent Architecture from China (2021–22). Trained as an architect and a historian, his research focuses on the intersections of architecture with science, technology, and media. Kotsioris holds a PhD in history and theory of architecture from Princeton University and an MArch II from Harvard University. He has taught architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Barnard+Columbia Architecture, Princeton School of Architecture, The Cooper Union, and Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is a co-editor of Radical Pedagogies, a global history of post-WWII experiments in architectural education during the second half of the twentieth century (MIT Press, 2022).
Ana Leal was born in 1978 in Portugal. She graduated in architecture in Porto, Portugal, and has been dedicating her professional journey to editorial and curating projects on the topic of architecture since 2006. Ana Leal is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of AMAG publisher and magazine since 2011.
She was also the cofounder of DARCO magazine in 2006, the cofounder and co-curator of AICO Architecture International Congress at Oporto in 2010, and the founder and curator of AAICO Architecture and Art International Congress at Oporto in 2018.
Between 2013 and 2019 she was the creative and design director and head chief of branding and marketing for the commercial brand OTIIMA.
