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The Art of Architectural Grafting
Architect Jeanne Gang argues that the agricultural technique of “grafting” can help building design adapt to climate change.
Jeanne Gang, one of America’s most distinguished contemporary architects, proposes using the ancient plant-cultivation technique of grafting in both architecture and urban design as an effective strategy to address the urgent issue of climate change. Grafting is the biological process of connecting two separate living plants so they can grow and function as one. This ancient practice continues to be performed today in search of more fruitful, palatable, and resilient varieties of plants.
Grafting is also an incredibly useful and untapped paradigm for how architecture can begin to cope with climate change on a broader, more impactful scale because it is predicated upon our existing building fabric. The term “grafting” has the potential to inform architecture across many scales, provoking the imagination and shaping tectonic, programmatic, formal, and regenerative adaptations.
Jeanne Gang, one of America’s most distinguished contemporary architects, proposes using the ancient plant-cultivation technique of grafting in both architecture and urban design as an effective strategy to address the urgent issue of climate change. Grafting is the biological process of connecting two separate living plants so they can grow and function as one. This ancient practice continues to be performed today in search of more fruitful, palatable, and resilient varieties of plants.
Grafting is also an incredibly useful and untapped paradigm for how architecture can begin to cope with climate change on a broader, more impactful scale because it is predicated upon our existing building fabric. The term “grafting” has the potential to inform architecture across many scales, provoking the imagination and shaping tectonic, programmatic, formal, and regenerative adaptations.
- GenresArchitecture
180 pages, Hardcover
Published April 26, 2024
2 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Jeanne Gang
8 books9 followersJeanne 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 31, 2024
well considered and extremely interesting concepts presented in clear and accessible language, lacking only, and very slightly so, in chronological organization.
June 7, 2024
An amazing read that highlights the need for designers to shed the idea that small steps will prevent climate change. Radical action is required, and grafting is one of many necessary tools.
“ Architects can no longer avoid this contradiction through self-deception. For a time, we told ourselves that we could solve architecture's carbon problem if we just made buildings that performed better and used less energy. An entire industry embraced this approach, leading to the proliferation of performance rating systems, and it was success-ful-to a degree-in reducing emissions. But the widespread adoption of this approach and its partial success caused designers to believe that the crucial work of carbon mitigation belonged solely to the technical side of architecture. Intellectual and creative design discourse were able to avoid the issue, and the denial continues.”
“ Architects can no longer avoid this contradiction through self-deception. For a time, we told ourselves that we could solve architecture's carbon problem if we just made buildings that performed better and used less energy. An entire industry embraced this approach, leading to the proliferation of performance rating systems, and it was success-ful-to a degree-in reducing emissions. But the widespread adoption of this approach and its partial success caused designers to believe that the crucial work of carbon mitigation belonged solely to the technical side of architecture. Intellectual and creative design discourse were able to avoid the issue, and the denial continues.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews