In its 20th year, Studio Gang is enjoying its moment in the sun.
Jeanne Gang, the firmâs 53-year-old Founding Principal, who has garnered a MacArthur Fellowship and a passel of design accolades, is among a small handful of architectsâand even more rarefied band of female architectsâwhom the press tags with the adjective âstar.âÂ
Studio Gangâs design work is much in vogue these days. Its offices in Chicago and New York are currently juggling 14 projects in various stages of design or construction (see box, page 38). To keep up with rising demand, it has steadily increased its workforce to 91 people, from 19 a decade ago.
The firmâs impact on the built environment stems from Jeanne Gangâs ecologically tinted design
aesthetic that views buildings as âsocial connectorsâ for people and their surrounding environments. And her firmâs approach to arrive at a design solution is through rigorous and detailed investigations of its clientsâ project goals.
Internally, Studio Gang, despite its growth, still operates like a âcollective,â where associates are encouraged to chime in freely on projects. As such, the company seems less cultish than some other high-profile design firms. And the firmâs leadership is making sure that the projects it takes on donât overload its staffâs capacity.
âWe could have gotten larger quicker, but we pace ourselves,â says Design Principal Juliane Wolf, who started working for Studio Gang while she was a student and has been with the firm full time since 2001.
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A large, open âliving roomâ with a fireplace, kitchen, and lots of daylight stimulates encounters and discussions at The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo (Mich.) College. Photo: Steve Hall/Hedrich Blessing.
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Making contact
At a TED Talk in San Francisco last October, Gang explained that, in a world whose urban habitat is âout of balance,â her firm strives to design buildings as ârelationships, where people can come together.â
Studio Gang has applied this concept to a wide range of structures: firehouses, civic buildings, theaters, offices, and residential projects. Case in point: The three-building, 394,000-sf Campus North Residence Commons it designed for the University of Chicago is probably best known for its âhouse hub,â which over three floors creates a home-like environment with communal spaces for cooking, studying, and relaxing that allow students to interact and collaborate.
Wolf says Studio Gangâs design philosophy has remained consistent through her years there. She points to two cultural projects sheâs worked onâthe Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre, built in 2003, and the Writers Theatre, built last yearâthat had similar design goals of becoming community and regional destinations with an emphasis on facilitating audience interaction and enjoyment.
Studio Gang doesnât have a recognizable style, per se. Boldness often jockeys for position with common sense. âSometimes, just tweaking slightly can make something special happen,â says Wolf. But the firmâs design intent never strays too far from connecting a building with its surrounding environs. For example, Studio Gangâs designs for two boathouses in Chicago are distinguished by âVâ and âMâ roof shapes that are meant to âreflect the movement and rhythm of rowing,â says Gang.
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Deep Research
The starting point for each of Studio Gangâs projects, says Wolf, is an extensive âresearch and discovery phase, and a thorough investigation of the client and the project.â Â
Take one of Gangâs favorite recent projects: Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo (Mich.) College, built in 2014. Prior to putting Sharpie to paper, her firm assembled a book-size compendium of documents and notes that included details about a nearby 100-year-old farmhouse made from âlog brickââa mixture of two-foot-long logs and cementitious material. That became the architectural model for Arcusâs cordwood masonry exterior walls, whose construction, says Gang, is âsuper low techâanyone can do it, and the act of making it is a social activity.â
Gang the environmentalist also likes the fact that the woodâs carbon is âtrappedâ within the wall.
The 10,000-sf Arcus Center is designed to âbreak down traditional barriersâ among its occupants and visitors, says Wolf. The open âliving roomâ at its center, activated by daylight, features a kitchen and fireplace. This space creates the potential for âinformal meetings and casual encounters,â says Gang.
Wolf notes that since the Arcus Center opened, its applications have increased tenfold.
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Cordwood masonry was used to construct the structureâs unique exterior walls that emphasize the buildingâs affinity with its surrounding environment. Photo: Iwan Baan.
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Materials matter
Gang pays close attention to the materials her team specifies, partly with an eye toward environmental impact but also to maintain a buildingâs local authenticity.Â
âMore and more, weâre trying to find ways to use wood,â she said during a speech at the Art Institute of Chicago in March. The Writers Theatre is framed with laminated wood timbers that rest on âpawsââcedar wedges placed at the beamâs baseâcreated by a crafts shop in Ottawa, Ill., thatâs one of only two such artisans in the country doing this kind of work.
In New York, the five-story Richard Gilder Center for Science and Innovation, a 195,000-sf addition to the American Museum of Natural History scheduled to open in 2020, is designed for more efficient circulation flow with the 10 existing buildings that surround it. The sculpted walls of the centerâs Exhibition Hall will be formed using shotcrete, similar to whatâs used in subway construction, says Wolf.
Studio Gang is also working on an office building in Chicago for the Natural Resources Defense Fund that can meet the tough performance standards of the Living Building Challenge. That means avoiding materials with chemicals banned on the Challengeâs ever-expanding Red List, which Gang says is âthe new frontierâ for AEC firms.
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Bringing human scale to skyscrapers
Gang once referred to tall buildings as âvertical social fabric.â And her firm has put that idea to work at two signature high-rise towers in Chicago: Aqua and Vista.
The 82-story Aqua tower, built in 2010, has more than 700 tenants. Each apartment opens up to a balcony whose dramatic contoured shape makes it easier for tenants to see and communicate with neighbors. That contour also âconfuses the wind,â says Gang, making the balconies more comfortable.
The 95-story, 1,186-foot-tall Vista building, scheduled for completion in 2020, reflects the geometric properties of a âfrustrum,â found in gemstones and crystals. In laymanâs terms, the buildingâs curtain wall is staggered so each ascending floor is indented by a few inches from the floor below, giving tenants a better view of the outdoors.Â
Vista will also allow more daylight at street level. The same is true of Studio Gangâs design for 40 Tenth Avenue on New Yorkâs west side, whose âsolar carveâ form follows the movement of the sun and twists the building away from the High Line below. Gang says this design could provide up to 200 additional hours of daylight for the High Lineâs vegetation during growing season.
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Can buildings engender trust?
Gang is taking the nexus of buildings, people, and public space to a more overtly societal level at Polis Station, her firmâs ongoing reimaging of police stations away from being âscary fortressesâ to centers of gravity and safety for the public they serve.Â
After conducting conversations and workshops with community leaders, local neighbors, children, public officials, and the police, Studio Gang chose a police station in North Lawndale, Ill.âa town plagued by numerous shootingsâfor its first âintervention.â The project included helping to raise $35,000 to build a basketball half court on the stationâs parking lot. (Parents now say this court is much safer than other courts in the neighborhood.)
Gang envisions a 21st-century police station as a community hub that might include a barbershop, bike shop, food market, and other public spaces âthat spark conversationsâ between the community and the police, toward the ultimate goal of re-establishing mutual trust.
âThis is not a utopian fantasy,â she insists. âBut it requires engaging the public who live there.â
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Executive Editor Robert Cassidy contributed reporting for this article.Â
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