Architectural Digest — "18 Captivating New Books to Spark Inspiration"

“Studio Gang: Architecture
By Studio Gang
Phaidon

Over the past 20 years, Studio Gang has established itself as Chicago’s preeminent architectural voice. And in the most recent decade, that influence has gone global. Today the AD100 firm has offices in the Windy City as well as in San Francisco, New York, and Paris; its current projects range from a sculptural art center in Little Rock, Arkansas, to a 2.2 million-square-foot terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. To celebrate its work to date, the firm has released a new monograph chronicling 25 of its greatest hits. The studio intentionally organized the projects into themes rather than chronology or program, which lends moments of discovery along the way. A chapter titled ‘Flow,’ for instance, yields not only the studio’s most famous project, Chicago’s Aqua Tower (whose curves are embossed on the monograph’s forest green cover), but also a quieter building for Kalamazoo College whose sweeping exterior walls are made from wood masonry. ‘What Are You Made Of,’ meanwhile, focuses on ephemeral, civically minded projects, such as a series of silvery mylar ‘buoys’ made in collaboration with Chicago performance artist Nick Cave. Jeanne Gang, the firm’s founder, sums up the studio’s ethos as ‘actionable idealism’ in the volume’s introduction. And, indeed, no matter the scale, the work on display in these pages strikes a perfect balance between pragmatism and humanity.”

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