Studio Gang Architects


Studio Gang is an American architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Founded and led by architect Jeanne Gang, the Studio is known for its material research and experimentation, collaboration across a wide range of disciplines, and focus on sustainability. The firm’s works range in scale and typology from the 82-story mixed-use Aqua Tower to the 10,000-square-foot Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College to the 14-acre Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo. Studio Gang has won numerous awards for design excellence, including the 2016 Architizer A+ Firm of the Year Award and the 2013 National Design Award for Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, as well as various awards from the American Institute of Architects and AIA Chicago.

Background

Founded by Jeanne Gang in 1997, Studio Gang is recognized for a design process that foregrounds the relationships between people, communities, and environments. The Studio works as a collective of architects, designers, and planners, collaborating closely with experts in a range of fields. The Studio uses design as a medium to connect people socially, experientially, and intellectually.
One of the Studio's first built works, the Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre, was completed in 2003, and won praise from critics; the Chinese American Service League Kam Liu Center, finished the following year, garnered the firm additional accolades. Aqua Tower and the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo, both completed in 2010, significantly increased the Studio global profile, winning acclaim from architecture critics.
The firm’s projects explore new typologies, materials, and techniques. For its Writers Theatre project, for example, completed in 2016, the Studio hung wood in axial tension to create a unique space for theatre-goers as well as an iconic identity for this regional civic and cultural anchor.
Completed in 2014, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership is a purpose-built structure for social justice education and utilizes cordwood masonry for its exterior walls. This heritage technique is a low-tech and relatively inexpensive method of building assembly used to achieve a high-performance facade. The wood walls sequester more carbon than was released in building them, responding to today’s need to reduce carbon pollution—one of many environmental issues embraced by social justice movements.
The WMS Boathouse at Clark Park, and Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571, feature a sculptural roof that translates the motion of rowing and are two of four boathouses intended to revitalize the Chicago River. The projects stemmed from the Studio's advocacy publication Reverse Effect, published in 2011, which imagines a greener future for Chicago's waterways.
The Studio's Northerly Island project, which transforms a former airfield into a public lakefront park and habitat, opened to the public in 2015.
The Studio employs more than 90 people as of May 2017.

Selected projects

Towers

Education

Nature, Culture, and Community

Exhibitions

Selected awards