Jeanne Gang

Jeanne Gang (born March 19, 1964) is an American architect and MacArthur Fellow. She leads Studio Gang Architects, an architecture and urban design firm based in Chicago and New York. Gang's projects include Aqua, an 82-story mixed-use skyscraper, the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park, and Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571 on the Chicago River, and the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo.

Jeanne Gang was born on March 19, 1964, in Belvidere, Illinois. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois in 1986 and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1993. 

In 1989, she was an International Rotary Fellow, and she studied at the ETH Swiss Federal University of Technical Studies in Zurich, Switzerland.

Prior to founding her own firm, Studio Gang Architects, she worked with OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.

The work of Studio Gang Architects has been exhibited widely. In 2012, the Studio was featured in the solo exhibition Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects at the Art Institute of Chicago; in 2011, Studio Gang was part of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream. The Studio's work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, the National Building Museum, and at Design Miami. She has received high honors for her work, including the National Design Award for Architectural Design from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in 2013 and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006.

Gang has authored two books—Reveal (2011) and Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago's Waterways (2011)—and co-edited the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition catalogue Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects in 2012.

Gang has taught architecture as an adjunct associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology since 1998. She was a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2004 and 2011, held the Louis I. Kahn professor chair at the Yale School of Architecture in 2005, was the Graduate Design Studio Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in the spring of 2007, and taught at Rice University School of Architecture in 2014.

In 2009, the skyscraper Aqua was completed; it was designed by a team led by Gang, and was the third tallest building in the world to have a woman as lead architect, at 859 feet (262 m). It was her first skyscraper project and was the largest project ever awarded to an American firm headed by a woman.

In the spring of 2014, Gang signed on to be a member of the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition jury.

Currently a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Gang has also served as the John Portman Design Critic in Architecture and a visiting critic at the GSD (2017 and 2011), a visiting studio critic at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (2015), the Cullinan Visiting Professor at Rice University School of Architecture (2014), a visiting lecturer at the Princeton University School of Architecture (2007), the Louis I. Kahn Junior Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Architecture (2005), and a studio critic at the Illinois Institute of Technology. 

Her studios have explored how design can help create beneficial connections between people and their environments, with a focus on cities, ecologies materials and other technologies of the 21st century.

In 2018, Gang unveiled designs for the Arkansas Art Center, a $70 million art museum and nature conservatory in Little Rock, Arkansas. The project has been described as a "museum in a forest."

On March 27, 2019, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the design team led by Gang, Studio ORD, had been selected as the winner of an international design competition for the new $2.2 billion Global Terminal at O'Hare International Airport. The project is scheduled to begin in 2023.

• One Delisle, Toronto (pre-construction)
• California College of the Arts San Francisco Campus
• MIRA, San Francisco
• One Hundred Above the Park, St. Louis (to be completed 2020)
• Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History (to be completed 2020)
• Vista Tower (to be completed 2019)
• 40 Tenth Avenue (to be completed 2019)
• Rescue Company 2 (to be completed 2018)
• Solstice on the Park (completed 2018)
• University of Chicago Campus North Residential Commons (completed 2016)
• Writers Theatre (completed 2016)
• City Hyde Park (completed 2016)
• Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571 (completed 2016)
• Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College (completed 2014)
• WMS Boathouse at Clark Park (completed 2013)
• Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo (completed 2010)
• Aqua Tower (completed 2010)
• Columbia College Chicago Media Production Center (completed 2010)
• SOS Children's Villages Lavezzorio Community Center (completed 2008)
• Chinese American Service League Kam Liu Center (completed 2004)
• Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre at Rock Valley College (completed 2003)

• World's Most Influential Architect, Time Magazine, 2019
• Winner of the Marcus Prize for Architecture presented by Univ of WI and the Marcus Corp. Foundation, 2017
• Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award, Philadelphia Center for Architecture, 2017
• Fellowship, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 2017
• Elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017
• Public Humanities Award, Illinois Humanities, 2017
• Architect of the Year, Women in Architecture Awards, Architectural Review, 2016
• Chicagoans of the Year, Chicago Tribune, 2016
• "Design 50," NewCity, 2016
• Chevalier dans l’Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur, 2015
• Honorary Doctorate, Columbia College Chicago, 2014
• Honorary Senior Fellow, Design Futures Council, 2014
• New Generation Leader, Women in Architecture Awards, Architectural Record, 2014
• National Design Award for Architectural Design, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2013
• Jesse L. Rosenberger Medal, University of Chicago, 2013
• Honorary Doctorate, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013
• Elected into the National Academy of Design, 2012
• John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow, 2011
• Fellow, American Institute of Architects, 2009
• "Cultural Heroes," Time Out Chicago, 2008
• Iakov Chernikov Prize Nominee, 2008
• Academy Award in Architecture, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2006
• Emerging Voices Award, Architecture League of New York, 2006
• Rave Award Nominee, Wired Magazine, 2004
• Chicagoans of the Year, Chicago Tribune, 2004
• Design Vanguard, Architectural Record, 2001

• Reveal (2011), Princeton Architectural Press, ISBN 978-1-56898-993-8
• Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago's Waterways (2011), ISBN 978-0-9840183-0-7
• Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects (2012), Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-19118-9
• Studio Gang: Architecture (2020), Phaidon Press, ISBN 978-1-83866-054-3