Chicago Tribune — “Architect Jeanne Gang’s Vision Expands from the Skyscraper to the Police Station”
November 15, 2015
“While the powerfully sculpted forms of Gang’s buildings are arresting to the eye, she is not a formalist obsessed with the way buildings look at the expense of how they work. Instead, she personifies a central theme of the biennial: It’s time for architects to expand their role, or ‘agency,’ to address such pressing problems as climate change and the wave of shootings that’s wracking Chicago. …
Her Polis Station plan …grew from a “community cafe” meeting, held earlier this year, that addressed how to break down barriers between neighbors and police. The police, Gang learned, were already holding basketball events and coaching youth teams.
‘We walked out of that meeting and said, Why not bring the team to the station?’ she recalled. She pitched the idea of a basketball court to the Park District. Funds were raised and, shortly after the biennial began, a small, ordinary-looking basketball court opened in one of the outlying parking lots of the 10th District station.”
