Jeanne Gang

Jeanne Gang, FAIA, LEED AP, is the founder and principal of Studio Gang Architects, a rising international practice based in Chicago whose work confronts pressing contemporary issues. Through her practice—conceived as a collective of architects, designers, and thinkers—Gang responds to and reframes questions that lie locally and resound globally. Rooting her designs in compelling ideas rather than repetitive formal principles, Gang often arrives at design solutions through cross-field investigations in materials, technology, and the natural and social sciences. Her approach is exemplified by such recent Studio Gang projects as the Aqua Tower (the 2009 Emporis Skyscraper of the Year), the design of Northerly Island (a 91-acre former airfield on Chicago’s lakefront), Hyderabad Tellapur O2 (a high-rise residential development in India), and Vancouver Pair (two towers for downtown Vancouver, Canada).

Since founding Studio Gang in 1997, Jeanne Gang has gone on to win numerous honors, among them a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of her achievements as “an architect challenging the aesthetic and technical possibilities of the art form in a wide range of structures”; an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and an Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York. In 2009 she was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Her work with Studio Gang has been published and exhibited widely, most notably at the International Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. A graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (M.Arch with Distinction), since 1999 she has been an adjunct faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Reveal, her first volume on Studio Gang’s work and working process, was released in April 2011 from Princeton Architectural Press. Her new book on transforming Chicago’s waterways for the 21st century, Reverse Effect, was published in November 2011.