Jing Liu

Jing Liu was born in Nanjing, China. Liu moved a lot during her teenage years, and received her education in China, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. From 1999-2004, Liu studied Architecture at Tulane University School of Architecture in New Orleans, and moved to New York in 2004. In 2008 Liu founded SO – IL with Dutch architect Florian Idenburg. In 2010, the firm won the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program with Pole Dance a highly experimental and interactive structure installation. They went on to design the award-winning Kukje Gallery in Seoul. The design of Kukje Gallery marks an important moment in the architecture today in which “one finds a multidimensional architecture in step with the ambiguous spatiality of the digital era,” wrote the British architectural critic Sam Jacob in Domus. In 2012 and 2013, SO – IL was commissioned to design the inaugural presence for the Frieze Art Fair in New York City. Working with a prefabricated rental tent structure forced them to be inventive with a limited vocabulary. Pie-shaped tent section wedges bend the otherwise straight tent into a meandering, supple, shape. The winding form animates it on the unusual waterfront site, as well as establishing the temporary structure as an icon along the water. In Spring 2013, SO – IL won a competition to design the new Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis.