NOW CONFERENCE – SEASON 1
1 JULY 2011 – 2 JULY 2011

The conference, previously known as DATUM:KL, remains the principal anchor event for the Festival, but shall from this year onwards be re-conceptualised as the NOW CONFERENCE. NOW implies an immediacy, a moment in the present to define new positions and potentials, an architectural status update! At a time when architecture seeks new directions and new beginnings, the debut conference will seek to examine and describe key trajectories of thinking and practice, and to underline the essential transformative aspects of architecture as a critical instrumentality to engage a continually changing world.

NOW CONFERENCE / SEASON 1 will feature a series of lectures by a selection of both established and emergent architects and designers with divergent range of approaches and interests from the region and internationally. In addition to introducing a new set of exceptional talent to the Datum community, this year we welcome back some of our original speakers who over the years has also risen in stature and profile alongside Datum. The new conference will also have a refreshed and updated format but will leave intact the things that have worked well.























SPEAKERS (in alphabetical order)
YB SENATOR DATO SRI’ IDRIS JALA PUTRAJAYA
ALFREDO BRILLEMBOURG CARACAS
PITUPONG CHAOWAKUL BANGKOK
FLORIAN IDENBURG & JING LIU NEW YORK/BEIJING
ZHANG LI BEIJING
LAURENCE LOH PENANG
JÜRGEN MAYER BERLIN
HIROSHI NAKAMURA TOKYO
OLE SCHEEREN HONG KONG/BEIJING
MARC SIMMONS NEW YORK
CAMERON SINCLAIR LONDON
ALAN TAY & SEETOH KUM LOON SINGAPORE


FLORIAN IDENBURG & JING LIU NEWYORK/BEIJING
SOLID OBJECTIVES – IDENBURG LIU (SO–IL) www.so–il.org
LECTURE TITLE: TO BE DETERMINED

Florian Idenburg was born in the Netherlands and holds a Master of Science in Architecture from Delft University of Technology. Between 2000 and 2007, Idenburg worked at SANAA, the practice of Pritzker Prize winners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa where he became Senior Associate charged with the design and realisation of a performing arts center in Almere, the Netherlands, and two internationally acclaimed museums (the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York). Apart from being responsible for these canonical projects, Idenburg has been credited for contributing to the conceptual framework of the office and raising SANAA’s profile internationally.

After the successful completion of the New Museum in 2008 he established SO-IL (Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu) with Jing Liu in New York. With SO-IL, Idenburg created an office that focuses on the development of new ideas and their viability in the world. He recognises the merit in combining practice with academia, as such crosspollination stimulates innovation. Through his endeavours he has become a recognised voice in both worlds.

He currently holds the Brown-Forman Visiting Chair in Urban Design at the College of Design at the University of Kentucky. He has also been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School for Architecture Planning and Preservation since 2009 and a Design Critic at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard since 2007.

Previously he held the position of Visiting Lecturer at the School of Architecture at Princeton University. Idenburg is a frequent speaker, panelist and critic at universities and institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has published two books (Learning from Japan, Lars Mueller Publishers 2009, and Relations, Postmedia 2010). His essays appears regularly in publications such as Abitare, Domus, A+U and Mark magazine.

Idenburg is the 2010 recipient of the Charlotte Köhler Prize, an award from the Prince Bernhard Royal Cultural Fund in the Netherlands for exceptional talent. He is a licensed architect in the Netherlands and an International Associate of the American Institute of Architects.