Jeanne Gang

Architect Jeanne Gang, FAIA, is the founding partner of Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Her inquisitive, forward-looking approach to design—unique in its pursuit of new technical and material possibilities as well as in its expansion of the active role of designers in society—has distinguished her as a leading architect of her generation.

Drawing insight from ecological systems, she creates striking places that connect people with each other, their communities, and the environment. Her diverse, award-winning portfolio includes cultural centers that convene diverse audiences, public spaces that generate positive social and ecological impact, installations that challenge traditional material properties, and high-rise towers that foster community. Notable among these is the celebrated Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which the New York Times called “a poetic, joyful, theatrical work of public architecture and a highly sophisticated flight of sculptural fantasy.”

Other completed projects include the reimagined Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock; the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris; Tom Lee Park in Memphis; and two towers that have redefined Chicago’s skyline: the 101-story St. Regis Chicago, now the city’s third-tallest building, and the 82-story, undulating Aqua Tower.

Her ongoing work includes major cultural and civic projects throughout the Americas and Europe, such as a new United States Embassy in Brasília; a new home for the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in Palo Alto; an expansion of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock; and the David Rubenstein Treehouse, Harvard University’s first mass timber building. Tall buildings in Paris, New York, and Toronto are also underway.

Intertwined with built work, Jeanne and the Studio also develop research, publications, and exhibitions that push design’s ability to create public awareness and give rise to change—a practice Jeanne calls “actionable idealism.” The Studio has championed innovative design strategies to improve ecological biodiversity in cities, including bird-safe building techniques and an experimental prairie ecosystem on the rooftop of their Chicago office. At the same time, Jeanne has challenged the status quo in professional practice by closing the gender wage gap in her company and encouraging her colleagues to follow suit.

Jeanne is a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, her alma mater, where her teaching and research focus on the multi-faceted potential of materiality and the cultural and environmental aspects of buildings’ reuse. She is the author of four books on architecture. Her most recent, The Art of Architectural Grafting, was released last year in English and French editions. Her work has been honored and exhibited widely, and is in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Canadian Centre for Architecture, MAXXI, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago.

A MacArthur Fellow, Jeanne has been named one of the most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. She is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honor, and a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters. She has been recognized with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the Charlotte Perriand Award, and the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.