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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Internationally renowned architect and Illinois State alumna Jeanne Gang will serve as the commencement speaker for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Saturday, May 11, at 9:30 a.m. at Memorial Stadium. Gang graduated from Illinois State in 1986 with a degree in architecture.
Gang is a founding partner of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. She is known for her design approach that prioritizes connections between people, communities and the environment.
Her award-winning projects include two towers that redefined the Chicago skyline: the 101-story St. Regis Chicago (now the city’s third-tallest building) and the 82-story Aqua Tower. Other completed work in Chicago includes a nature boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo and two boathouses along the Chicago River. She is also designing a new global terminal for O’Hare International Airport.
“Jenny Gan redrawn the skylines of the world’s most important cities. She redefined what her entire discipline thought was possible in design and structure,” said Chancellor Robert Jones. “When you start looking for a commencement speaker who can stand on a stage and honestly inspire our graduates to boldly imagine their futures, your first call has to be Jeanne Gang.”
She also recently completed the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which was named one of the Best Buildings of 2023 by The Wall Street Journal. Her other works include the redesigned Arkansas Museum of Art in Little Rock and the Akers Center for Social Justice Leadership in Kalamazoo, MS.
A professor of practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Gang received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2011 and was named one of the most influential people by Time magazine in 2019. Other honors include the Cooper-Hewitt National Award for Architectural Design, the Charlotte Perriand Award, the ULI Vision Award and the Architectural Review Architect of the Year Award.
She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and was named an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2018. She is also an accomplished writer. Her forthcoming book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, will be published this spring.
Jones will preside over the campus-wide ceremony where graduates will be recognized by the university. For more information about the campus-wide ceremony, including clear bag policy, gowns and parking, visit startupment.illinois.edu.
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