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Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, one of the world’s most influential urban designers, is a speaker at this month’s international conference in:situ in Oakland. She talks to Joanna Wane about why size doesn’t mean everything.
One of the most important things to read about any story about Chicago architect Jeanne Gang
Of course, they are spectacular. The 101-story St. Regis Chicago is made up of three sculptural towers that look like undulating glass columns. The nearby Aqua building – an early work that was named Skyscraper of the Year in 2009 – is even wilder, consisting of irregularly shaped concrete floor slabs that extend from the facade to create corrugated balconies that allow residents to better appreciate The surrounding scenery.
The most interesting thing about them, however, isn’t their height. Aqua’s topography is inspired by the layered limestone outcrops along the Great Lakes, and sustainability is at the heart of its design. Eco-friendly features include a water-saving irrigation system, bamboo flooring and efficient heat transfer from inside to outside. Approximately 84% of the materials remaining after construction were sent to recycling centers rather than landfills.
The St. Regis Hotel cost nearly $1 billion to build and is an engineering marvel. Completed in 2020, it features a reinforced concrete spine and unoccupied “blow-through” floors (a first in Chicago) to reduce wind-induced sway.
“The chandeliers in the apartments above and below don’t rattle,” one reporter wrote. chicago tribune After visiting the tower which is still under construction. “White hats won’t be in the toilets. Residents won’t be reaching for motion sickness pills like they do in other supertall buildings plagued by high winds.”
Gan laughs when I suggest that measuring value in meters seems to be a uniquely male way of becoming famous.
“It’s almost like there’s a cult following for this building type – the tallest, the widest, the largest…” she said. “It’s interesting that all these statistics go on because that’s not the focus of these two buildings. I’m proud of them because they’re great buildings that function on an urban scale, but they also function from the inside out function, they’re fun for people who don’t live there, and they’re safe for the birds. They’re doing a lot of things you wouldn’t normally think of [with skyscrapers]”.
Gang is among the international names gathering in Auckland for the live conference at Spark Arena on February 21. Billed as a day of “inspiration, innovation and dialogue”, speakers at the conference included Kai-Uwe Bergmann from New York, BIG’s resident partner responsible for urban and landscape projects in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East; and Barclay & co-founder of Crousse Architecture, which operates in Paris and Lima, Peru.The purpose of promoting this event is to guardianarchitecture critic Oliver Wainwright.
Described by CBS News as “the world’s most important female architect,” Gang founded her international architecture and urban design practice, Studio Gang, in the late 1990s.She is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and has been listed on time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2019. She’s also a birdwatcher, so her first visit to New Zealand might include a side trip to a place like Tiritiri Matangi, where she might see southern geese.
The natural world has had a signature influence on her work, not only from a design aesthetic, but as a functional model that can be practically applied to how human communities function. “It’s the whole wisdom of nature, from its structure to the way animal structures respond to climate,” she said. “As an architect, I draw inspiration and research from nature, which has always been a source of inspiration for me.”
It was late afternoon in Chicago when we spoke, and Gan had just returned home from a nine-hour drive through rain and snow in North Carolina, where she had vacationed in the Appalachian Mountains. She sounded tired but was filled with genuine enthusiasm during a wide-ranging discussion, ranging from Auckland’s population pressures to my childhood memories of living in Hong Kong in the 1970s, to the iconic round-window skyscrapers that were the tallest buildings in Asia at the time. of exclamation. At only 168m in height, it is not yet high enough to reach the respectable scale of a bungee jump.
“Hong Kong is developing so fast, it’s unbelievable,” she said. “This seems to be a very important time for Auckland to think about how the city can grow and accommodate a larger population, rather than just expand and occupy what France calls ‘outland’. [open ground]”.
Studio Gang’s headquarters in Chicago is a 1930s building that once served as a credit union serving new Polish immigrants. The New York team operates out of a high-rise building in Lower Manhattan, with smaller offices in San Francisco and Paris. The daughter of a community activist (her mother) and an engineer (her father), Gang describes design’s ability to bring about change as “doable idealism.” Her focus on environmental justice is reflected in architectural projects that raise public awareness of Chicago’s polluted waterways, promote biodiversity, and are developed in partnership with local communities.
In 2015, she led a study on whether architecture can help mitigate police violence and brutality, reimagining police stations as places that serve the community. Her natural boardwalk design at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo has been called an ideal example of harmony between nature and urban surroundings.
“We can do better than in the past, where planning was sometimes used to divide people, or how to choose where to put infrastructure or highways,” she said. “Or where to put trash.”
The focus of Gang’s keynote address at the Oakland conference will be the public aspects of museums. Last year, she completed a stunning 21,000-square-meter expansion for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, creating a vast cavernous atrium complete with curved concrete walls inspired by geology. She will also share some thoughts on architectural reuse practices, which she explores in her new book, The art of architectural graftingexpected to be released in March.
By 2050, approximately two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. Gang believes that the lines between urban and rural centers have become blurred. “I’m very interested in how people have these differences politically,” she said. “The human footprint is huge. What I worry about is how we adjust our relationships with each other to be less polarized.”
Presented by Te Kāhui Whaihanga / New Zealand Institute of Architects Live meeting It will be held on February 21st at Spark Arena.For more details and bookings see new zealand.com
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