Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, February 26, 2021: Jeanne Gang, an American architect (#1217)

Friday, February 26, 2021

Artist of the Day, February 26, 2021: Jeanne Gang, an American architect (#1217)

Jeanne Gang (1964) is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang (established in 1997), an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Internationally renowned for the Aqua Tower, Gang has recently completed projects such as Solstice on the Park, Writers Theatre, the University of Chicago Campus North Residential and Dining Commons, City Hyde Park, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, and two boathouses on the Chicago River, the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park and Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571. Her Aqua tower in Chicago is currently the tallest woman-designed building in the world, a distinction soon to be passed to the new Vista Tower, also of her design, nearby.

Jeanne Gang is one of Chicago's most prominent architects of her generation. She is known for an interdisciplinary design process that foregrounds relationships between individuals, communities, and environments. Gang earned her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois in 1986 and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1989, she was an International Rotary Fellow and studied at the ETH Swiss Federal University of Technical Studies in Zurich, Switzerland. She also studied at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, France. Prior to establishing Studio Gang in 1997, she worked with OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.

A 2011 MacArthur Fellow, Gang and her Studio were awarded the 2013 National Design Award for Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Gang was named the 2016 Woman Architect of the Year by the Architectural Review. In 2017, she was honored with the Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award (Philadelphia Center for Architecture) and Fellowship in the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, she was elected an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a lifetime honor.

Currently a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Gang has also served as the John Portman Design Critic in Architecture and a visiting critic at the GSD (2017 and 2011), a visiting studio critic at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (2015), the Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University School of Architecture (2014), a visiting lecturer at the Princeton University School of Architecture (2007).

Studio Gang's work has been honored, published, and exhibited widely. In 2018, the Studio presented the installation Stone Stories as part of the United States Pavilion exhibition Dimensions of Citizenship at the Venice Architecture Biennale; in 2017, the Studio was selected to design the National Building Museum's Summer Block Party installation; in 2012, the Studio was featured in the solo exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects at the Art Institute of Chicago;[42] and in 2011, the Studio participated in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.[43] The Studio's work has also been shown at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015 and 2017) and Design Miami (2014).

In 2018, Gang unveiled designs for the Arkansas Art Center, a $70 million art museum and nature conservatory in Little Rock, Arkansas. The project has been described as a "museum in a forest."

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