Our Gang
Architect Jeanne Gang and her innovative studio
By MARILYN SOLTIS
A city where groundbreaking architecture is embedded in the past,
present and future, Chicago is enhancing its reputation with the
success of the architectural firm Studio Gang and its founder, Jeanne
Gang..Studio Gang’s portfolio covers a broad spectrum of projects—urban
living, arts and education, community, residential, interiors and
exhibition—in Chicago and as far away as Shanghai, where the architects
designed Zhong Bang Village, a community made up of courtyard
dwellings. The portfolio also includes Columbia College’s new media
production center, which combines large film and animation studios with
classrooms and workshops. Worlds away, a 25-story residential building
in Hyderabad, India, uses traditional Indian techniques of self-shading
in inventive ways.
Led by Gang, the firm has been piling up awards, with national and
international recognition for its innovative and sustainable designs.
They were most recently honored with an award of High Commendation for
Chicago’s SOS Community Center at the World Architecture Festival in
Barcelona. SOS is a not-for-profit agency that trains foster parents
and reunites siblings. The community center was designed for maximum
use and to accommodate different forms of learning and social
interaction.
Azure Magazine features Gang’s redesign of the former ballroom of
the Ambassador West hotel into an apartment. The “Maisonette” is
featured as one of five brilliant living spaces in the annual “houses
issue.” Gang is, in fact, so innovative she recently placed 22nd on a
list of “The Nifty Fifty: America’s Next Household Names”—a compendium
of America’s up-and-coming in The New York Times Style Magazine—her
stunning design of Aqua in Chicago, the tallest skyscraper ever
designed by a female architect. Fast Company magazine deemed the
project “Chicks with Bricks.” Being lauded as a female architect means
little to Gang, who says she finds the gender reference somewhat odd.
One of four sisters, the 45-year-old Gang grew up in Belvidere,
about 75 miles northwest of Chicago. “I was one of those kids who liked
building things,” she says. “I loved math and art and was guided to
architecture. I wanted to build in cities.”
Drive and ambition took her to the University of Illinois for a
degree in architecture, followed by a master’s degree in architecture
from Harvard. Hired by a European firm, she worked and traveled in
Europe, experiencing different cities and urban environments before she
chose Chicago over New York to break out on her own.
“There was more to be built in Chicago, more opportunity,” Gang
says. “I was really interested in designing sustainable architecture.
Chicago was embracing and enforcing it.” She cites the green roof
program as an example, which reduces heat and positively impacts the
water that flows into the sewer system. “There’s always been an
innovative spirit in Chicago architects. It’s in our DNA.”
Founded by Gang in 1997, Studio Gang is located above the Aldo
outlet store in Wicker Park. The firm has expanded to 6,000 square feet
and 35 employees, sharing the building with a communist bookstore, a
poetry society and a lawyer. Gang likes the location because it allows
her and Studio Gang employees to walk or bike to work, and it’s across
the street from the Blue Line, making trips to the airport simple. The
parking lot and courtyard area double as experimental spaces to test
out new ideas.
While many architectural firms may specialize, Gang’s people like to
figure out new approaches. “People come to us to think about their
project,” she says. “It’s like a think tank.” Her design process
consists of collaboration with colleagues, consultants and experts in
other fields to gain a better understanding of all aspects of the
project, including that of cultures and cities. One of those colleagues
is her husband and the firm’s managing partner, Mark Schendel. They
both worked for the Rem Koolhaus Office for Metropolitan Architecture
(OMA) in Rotterdam and studied at Harvard.
The recently completed Aqua, Gang’s first residential skyscraper, is
a local testament to her talent for innovation. The 82-story, mixed-use
residential tower located in Lakeshore East has hotel rooms, rental
units, condominiums, office space, six levels of underground parking
and an 8-story base with a 82,500 square-foot terrace with gardens,
gazebos, a running track, fire pit, pools and hot tubs.
The building’s developer, James R. Loewenberg, president of
Loewenberg Architects and co-CEO of Magellan Development Groups, needed
a young, innovative architect and took a chance on Gang.
She liked the idea of urban cliff dwellers and designed Aqua’s balconies to form
organic wave-like shapes covering the façade. Gang took the plasticity
of concrete to make every balcony a different size and shape, creating
balconies deeper on the south than on the north side of the building
for sun-shading. Next to the living rooms, they seem like extensions of
the interior space. Tinted, reflective glass prevents overheating.
“Aqua could not have been built 10 years ago,” Gang says. “Making
the floors a slightly different shape would not have been economically
feasible. Technology makes it possible to share drawings with the
contractors on the job site without
taking a lot of extra time. They can pull up a drawing on a hand-held device as they are working.”
Gang also credits new technology with helping her get her firm started. “Digital resolution has been a great equalizer,” she says. “The work used to be
done at large firms where people sat at drawing boards. It makes it
easier to compete. You can draw faster, better, collaborate with people
around the world and design with more of an edge.”
Reviews of Aqua have been more than positive. Architecture writer
Lynn Becker went so far to say that Gang had ushered in a third school
of Chicago architecture.
One aspect of the building Gang is particularly proud of is that it prevents bird strikes. There is no reflective mirrored glass to attract birds and the skyscraper has a presence and difference the birds can recognize.
According to the animal rights organization PETA, collisions with
windows are among the most common human-related killers of migrating
birds in North America, resulting in more than 34 million bird deaths
annually in urban areas.
In fact, Studio Gang earned a PETA Proggy Award, which stands for “progress.” This award recognizes animal-friendly achievement in commerce and culture. PETA president
Ingrid E. Newkirk said, “The American architect Louis Sullivan coined
the phrase ‘form follows function.’ In the Aqua Tower, form follows
compassion.”
The Ford Calumet Environmental Center in Calumet was Gang’s first
experience with protecting birds. Like a “nest,” building materials
were collected from discarded materials in the area, like steel and
slag, demonstrating the sustainable principle of re-use. The
south-facing porch, an outdoor classroom for visitors, is enclosed with
a basketlike mesh of salvaged steel that protects migrating birds from
colliding with the glass they cannot see.
On the wings of Aqua’s success, the firm took on the new Solstice on
the Park, a 26-story residential tower. The structure is literally
shaped by solar access. The Hyde Park building’s surface is optimally
angled 71 degrees for Chicago’s latitude, and the glass allows sun to
enter the apartments during winter for passive solar warming while
keeping it out during the summer to reduce air-conditioning usage.
Gang is currently taking her love of nature to the South Pond at the
Lincoln Park Zoo, where she has been collaborating with experts in
water hydrology and landscape artists to improve the pond. Part of the
challenge is finding ways to improve the water quality of the pond and
deepening the pond to make it possible for fish to swim below thte
surface and survive the winter.
For the open-air educational pavilion next to the pond, Gang is
working with boat makers and different lumber manufacturers to create a
double curvature with smaller levels of woods creating a laminate. Both
the structure and pond will be sustainable.
Gang envisions designing museums and other public buildings. Another
intriguing idea to her is the design of structures for the performing
arts, where large numbers of people come together for a shared
experience. Studio Gang was recently selected as one of three finalists
out of 114 entries from 33 countries in an open international
competition for its design of a music center in Taipei, Taiwan. The
Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs wanted the
performance center to promote and celebrate Taiwan’s role as a global
center of pop music performance and production.
The architect appreciates all of the kudos and recognition, but her
sights are set on the future. “We still have a lot to do,” she says.
Published: February 07, 2010
Issue: February 2010 Innovation Issue