Jeanne Gang is the founding principal of Studio Gang. She is member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur. Her work is internationally renowned for a design process that foregrounds the relationships between individuals, communities, and environments.
The portfolio of projects spans scales and typologies, expanding beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries to pursuits ranging from the development of stronger materials to fostering stronger communities. She uses innovative responses to issues of environmental and ecological sustainability, employing sustainable-design techniques—such as the use of recycled materials—to conserve resources, decrease urban sprawl, and increase biodiversity.
She is best known for her Aqua Tower, an 82-story mixed-use skyscraper in downtown Chicago that, when completed in 2010, was one of the tallest buildings in the world designed by a woman. In 2013 Studio Gang Architects received the Architecture Design Award—awarded to an individual or a firm for “exceptional exemplary work in public, commercial, or residential architectural design”—from Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She is currently designing major projects throughout the Americas and Europe, including the Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; a unified campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco; and the new United States Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil. Jeanne Gang has been selected as the recipient of the 2017 Louis Kahn Memorial Award, an annual prize established by the Philadelphia Center for Architecture and Design in 1983 to recognize “an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of architecture,” while honoring one of the city’s most influential architects.