http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0611190292nov19,0,909197.story?coll=chi-business-hed
FRONT AND CENTER
Rising up to new heights
Jeanne Gang making name in architecture with unique designs
BY SUSAN DIESENHOUSE
November 19, 2006
Nature is a driving force in the work of rising design star Jeanne Gang, the 42-year-old principal of Studio/Gang/Architects.
For example, seaside motifs define her largest commission to date, the approximately $500 million Aqua residential tower, which by year's end will start rising on North Columbus Drive.
Gang lives downtown and teaches at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She and her husband and co-principal, Mark Schendel, 47, run their 20-person firm in Wicker Park, where reporter Susan Diesenhouse interviewed Gang.
Q. What is your most original concept?
A. Every project has something special because each one focuses on the client and their issues. What we seek, the excitement of architecture, is the breakthrough moment when the design expresses the project criteria.
Often, my concepts spring from childhood memories of landscapes. My Dad was a civil engineer, and we took lots of road trips to look at bridges. Still ingrained in my mind from one of those trips through Mesa Verde, Colo., is the image of the physical landscape merging with the vernacular architecture--dwellings carved into cliffs.
Q. Since Aqua is the largest, most expensive building you've designed so far, was there ever an intimidating moment?
A. No, we felt we had a good partner, Loewenberg Associates. They're very experienced at construction, and they engaged strong structural engineers.
It may be the largest commission for Studio Gang, but I've had lots of experience with big projects when I worked at other firms. (For instance, while working in Rotterdam for Rem Koolhaas, she helped design the 1 million-square-meter Grand Palais in Lille, France. It is a business, entertainment and residential project.)
Q. How are technological advances affecting your work?
A. In the Industrial Age, a lot of architecture was about using repetition to create a design that was easy to build. Now, digital tools help define our designs.
For Aqua, we discovered that using digital tools let us create slight, very gradual variations in the floor plates, making movement that responds to the site with wavelike configurations. Some people think that we get that effect by having the walls move, but it's the floors.
With digital drawing software we can draft repetitive elements faster than we could by hand. Laser cutting tools help us to quickly make models that translate the design to the scale of the building. In the field, the contractor can then use the digital information to lay out the curves for the real building or use a [global positioning system] to plot the points in space.
Q. Do you experience tension between your art, architecture and clients' economic requirements?
A. Always. I've never had a project without a budget. We always need the design to focus on what's really important for the client. We work with cost estimators early in the project. They could be consultants of ours or of the owners.
Q. How has the rising cost of construction materials affected your designs?
A. The intense cost fluctuations of the past few years, especially steel and concrete, affect the materials we use for the structural frame. For some architects it isn't a problem. They want to cover up the structure. But it's a problem for us because the structure is part of our design. For instance, Aqua wouldn't work as well in steel. It would be all angles. But the design concept is about waves, the fluidity of concrete.
Q. Do you ever feel that business gets in the way of designing?
A. In residential projects, a strong component is what's sellable. In the past, the market wasn't studied that heavily. Now it's almost a science determining how many studios, one-, two- or three-bedroom units to have. An architect has to respond to the market.
Q. Do you delineate between your art and your architecture?
A. No. Defining a three-dimensional building and its interior spaces that respond to the client's criteria is our art. Architecture isn't an art that's practiced in isolation.
Q. What type of projects do you prefer?
A. I especially like public spaces and civic buildings, like museums, libraries and projects like the planned Ford Calumet Environmental Center.
Q. Do you consider yourself to be a regional architect?
A. I respond to the region in which I'm working. For Aqua, overlooking Lake Michigan, the design is about water. But in hot, humid Biloxi, Miss., I'm working with Architects for Humanity on a house made of wood that uses natural ventilation. It opens when the weather's good and closes during storms.
Q. Where is Chicago architecture headed?
A. I hope it goes in a greener, more sustainable direction. Using less energy is the single biggest issue in architecture. It's critical that architects and owners start to address it.
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Jeanne Gang
Principal: Since 1997 at Gang/O'Donnell, the successor firm to Studio/Gang/Architects
Previous experience: Booth Hansen, Chicago; Rem Koolhaas, Rotterdam
Major projects include: Starlight Theater, Rockford; Liu Building, a youth center in Chinatown; 9/11 memorial in Hoboken, N.J.; installation for an aerospace design exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago; represented the U.S. at 2007 Venice Biennale for Architecture
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