Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects

by Jeanne Gang (Editor), Zoe Ryan (Contributor), Iker Gil (Contributor)

One of the foremost architects working today, Jeanne Gang is widely recognized for her innovative and independent practice. Studio Gang Architects confronts pressing contemporary issues and seeks to answer questions that exist locally but resound globally. The firm’s work is exemplified by recent projects such as the Aqua Tower in Chicago, an 82-story high-rise, which critic Paul Goldberger described as “reclaim[ing] the notion that thrilling and beautiful form can still emerge out of the realm of the practical.” With the studio poised to contribute a new set of buildings to the global skyline, Building examines its most current work, twelve built and unbuilt projects that address four major issues facing contemporary its relationship to nature, the development of dense urban areas, the integration of the ideas of community members, and architecture and performance. Featuring essays, interviews, sketches, and drawings—many previously unpublished—this beautifully illustrated book provides an insider's look at a cutting-edge architectural practice.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2012

About the author

Jeanne Gang leads Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based architecture and design firm. Gang's projects include Aqua, an 82-story mixed-use high-rise.

Studio Gang also generated SOS Children's Villages Lavezzorio Community Center, a 16,800-square-foot foster care community center on Chicago's South Side. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.

Gang earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois in 1986 and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University in 1993. In 1989, she was an International Rotary Fellow, and she studied at the ETH Swiss Federal University of Technical Studies in Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to founding her own firm, she worked with OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.

Studio Gang's work has been exhibited at the International Venice Biennale, the National Building Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and Gang has been featured in publications such as Metropolis and Architecture Magazine. She has received high honors for her work, including an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006.

Gang has taught architecture as an adjunct associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology since 1998. She was visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2004, held the Louis I. Kahn professor chair at the Yale School of Architecture in 2005, and was the Graduate Design Studio Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in the spring of 2007.