Jeanne Gang

Recorded January 25, 2024.

Jeanne Gang started her architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang in 1997. Founded in Chicago, the studio has expanded across the country with offices in New York and San Francisco, and has developed a diverse portfolio of cultural centers and public projects. Fueled by actionable idealism, Studio Gang pursues new technical and material possibilities to create places that connect people, support environmental resiliency, foster equity and justice, and empower historically marginalized communities.

Recent projects include the Richard Gilder Center for Science Education and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, and the Writers Theater in Glencoe, Illinois. Jeanne is a professor in practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where her teaching and research focuses on the cultural and environmental aspects of buildings’ reuse. She is a MacArthur Fellow, the Fall 2017 William Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for architecture and in 2019 was named one of most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.

About I Would Prefer Not To

Conceived and produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab and presented with The Architectural League, I Would Prefer Not To¹Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street,” The Piazza Tales (1856). tackles a usually unexamined subject: the refusal of an architectural commission. Why do architects make the decision to forfeit the possibility of work? At what point is a commission not worth it? When in one’s career is it necessary to make such a decision? Whether concealed out of politeness or deliberately shielded from public scrutiny, architects’ refusals usually go unrecorded by history, making them difficult to analyze or learn from. In this series of recorded interviews, I Would Prefer Not To aims to shed light on the complex matrix of agents, stakeholders, and circumstances implicated in every piece of architecture.

Transcript

This transcript was created using speech-to-text AI software and was lightly edited for continuity. The text may not accurately capture all information or aspects of the conversation.

Ana Miljački  00:21
Hello, and thank you for tuning in. I’m Ana Miljacki, Professor of Architecture at MIT and director of the Critical Broadcasting Lab. And on behalf of the Architectural League of New York and the Critical Broadcasting Lab, I welcome you to our architecture podcast series titled, I Would Prefer Not To. This season of the podcast is supported in part by the Graham Foundation. I Would Prefer Not To is an oral history project conducted through audio interviews on the topic of perhaps the most important kind of refusal in architects toolboxes, refusal of the architectural commission. By definition, the topic of refusal stays hidden from public scrutiny, and thus also hidden from history. Withdrawals of this kind, tend not to leave paper trails, and are not easy to examine or learn from and yet, the lessons contained in architects deliberations about and decisions not to engage are politically relevant and urgent. Decisions to not engage a commission, or types of commissions, or commissions with certain characteristics, inevitably forfeit potential profit, placing other values above it, at least momentarily. Today, I’m talking to Jeanne Gang. Thank you for joining me, Jeanne.  

Jeanne Gang 01:36
Thanks, Ana. Happy to be here. 

Miljački 01:38
Jeanne Gang started her own architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang in Chicago in 1997. Besides Chicago, the studio, whose function Jeanne recently described as analogous to a rock band, now includes offices in New York, San Francisco and Paris as well. Fueled by actionable idealism, the studio pursues new technical and material possibilities in order to create striking places that connect people, support environmental resiliency, foster equity and justice and empower historically marginalized communities. The firm has developed a diverse portfolio of cultural centers and public projects. It has been reimagining academic and museum buildings and following the Aqua Tower in Chicago, it has built numerous high rise residential towers. There are many recent buildings to mention, and I’ll only include a few: Richard Gilder Center for Science Education and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, Writers Theater in Glencoe, Illinois, The Arca Center for Social Justice leadership at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the new addition to Chicago skyline, the 101 storey St. Regis, Chicago. The firm is currently also working on a terminal for Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and many other projects. Jeanne is a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where her teaching and research focus on the cultural and environmental aspects of buildings’ reuse. She is a MacArthur Fellow, 2017 William Bernoudy architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in architecture and was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2019. Both Jeanne and the studio have received many more accolades, including Wall Street Journal magazine’s 2022 architecture Innovator of the Year, the 2023, Charlotte Perriand award, and Architectural Review’s architect of the year. So, Jeanne, (Jeanne: wow!) I know, I know the boards in your office are teeming with work. But as we do in this podcast, we will start by talking about the work that is not on them, and maybe then look back to some aspects of all of that work. So let’s talk first about the most memorable decision to not engage or to drop a commission. And if that has not happened yet, can you imagine it happening and on what grounds? 

Gang  04:31
Well, that goes way back. I think, just to start with, I would say that, in each case, when a project comes into the office, I’m usually thinking about how it can change things. And then I would say I’m joined by my colleagues, now that we meet every week, and talk about projects and their potential to make better, change for The better. Or maybe they are interesting in ways that you wouldn’t think of at first. So we’re usually coming at it like in a positive light to start with. And then there’s, you know, just, you can’t do everything. So things, it has to do with very practical decisions about, you know, how can we staff the project, how is, is the project, when is it happening and viable, and all these different other aspects. But of course, there are times when you can’t see how to align the values of the project, and but even in those cases, we’ll spend a little time thinking about, could it do some things before saying no, I guess, and that aspect doesn’t really have to do with the profitability, as you mentioned, in your intro, it’s more about, will it have impact and so, you know, I think the one that’s most memorable for me is just as an, I’m an advocate for the environment. And I, right after we first started getting some attention to our work and firm, I received a request by mail, regular mail, to give us a commission to design, to redesign the interior of a cruise ship. And which, it was, it’s very big, it’s actually like, you know, a multi-storey building on the water. And so that was kind of a first time that we received a request from a international company to do work for them. And so of course, like, cruise ship is not an environmental., well, there’s a lot of problems with the way that the cruise ship industry deals with waste, human waste, garbage, fuel, dirty fuel, all kinds of things that are just negatives, and red flags, right off the bat. But instead of just like ignoring the letter, or just saying no, thank you, I remember writing a letter back to them, and saying that, the interiors are one piece of the project, but if they were to reconsider the whole waste stream of the, of the cruise ship, and think of redesigning the way that they work with the environment, we would be thrilled to help them in that journey. And so it wasn’t really, in a way, it wasn’t a no, it was like, let’s, let’s expand this proposition. And, of course, I got no response to this letter. But I think and that’s a maybe a lot of times when we go back with this alternative proposal, there is not often a response. But I guess, the thing is, I’m really excited about and we are, in general, are excited about helping organizations like make transitions and change, especially to do with climate or other aspects. So those are really, they are opportunities that potentially could change things. So I like to look at it that way. Of course, I would say there are certain ones that it doesn’t seem possible, maybe and then that would be like a no, I mean, just a no, but those are probably not going to come our way, typically, because I think we’re known for working with environment and social justice and, you know, really thinking broader about each project.  

Miljački 09:14
I’m interested both in thinking about or hearing from you how you define impact and registers for impact that I’m sure will, that will come up more, but also sort of some quantity like, do you say no often? It sounded like there are many things that come your way that actually you don’t need to think about too much.  

Gang  09:37
Yes, we do. We do say no often nowadays, because we have many projects coming in, but it’s not often like on these high grounds of, you know, moral No, it’s really oftentimes it’s just, that looks really interesting, but we don’t have the capacity to do it or, because we really do think about the research involved in a project. And it’s not just a stylistic thing that you can just crank out, you know, we need a little time to, to think about the project and to, if it’s some quick turnaround, or maybe the person bringing the project is not, doesn’t seem honest about, like, the reality of that project sometimes, and you can kind of sense that, that could be another thing. Or it could be that the project is, maybe it suits another type of firm better, like, sometimes we’ve guided someone to maybe a younger firm or, it’s like, I would want to do it, but I feel like that’s better suited for a different type of firm. So that’s, there’s lots of reasons why we might not do it, which are not also, you know, moralistic I guess. But I think we do really take the consideration seriously. 

Miljački 11:02
So somewhere in your most recent monograph, you say that your practice is now organized around a few topics or a few interests, interest in nature, in culture and in social justice, and that these interests are basically shared by everyone at the studio. And, to quote you, you say, it’s not a standard set of criteria for organizing a practice, and it’s not consciously following an existing model. So imagining that you’re kind of finding your way in the world of organizing the practice, and what you say is, what I do know is that I, or we, just do what we want to do. And I thought we could unpack that a little bit. And I wanted to ask you to elaborate on this, both how this notion of sort of being able to do or wanting to do what you are interested in around the several topics manifests in particular projects or types of projects, and also how it works in terms of the mechanics of the practice. And you started actually saying something about that, sort of gathering people around projects to figure out whether it makes sense to work on it. But the question is, when and how do you begin to assert these interests and commitments in the flow of a project?  

Gang  12:25
The interests that I say are shared, I want to just mention that what you just described to me sounds very complicated. And that’s not always a good thing. For, like, from a marketing standpoint, let’s say, to be complex, but let’s face it, we we are not a simple one line, one liner kind of thing. And so that means that we are interested in different typologies. And we are, I’m always interested in how things connect. And I think today, it’s especially hard to be that way because of the media landscape that is surrounding us that wants just sound bytes of things. But, you know, I don’t want to let go of the complexity that it is to be an architect, to make these connections. And we’re so well positioned to do that as architects, because we see the political side, we see the environmental side, we see the the programmatic possibilities. We talk to the public in general users of buildings, we know how to speak to technical questions. And so we’re in this really unique place that isn’t simplistic, but that’s the power of it. So it’s just not necessarily hard. It’s not easy to communicate, what we do and why we make these choices. But I think we will start out by thinking together about like, the viability like how, what does it connect to, not just the project itself, but what’s outside of it, outside the boundaries of it? Those are interesting things we go after, the things we’re really, seem like, potential, and it could be very tangent things in the beginning of why it’s interesting, and maybe not written down in the brief. So it takes some consideration and in doing that, as a bigger group, is more and more difficult, of course. So we, the mechanics of that is, like the priorities of the subject matter, let’s say like, it’s about environment or climate or it’s about social justice, or it’s about housing when housing is so needed, and it’s a site that is a site that is pivotal in the success of a certain place. I was just thinking about Memphis, just such an interesting city and in such a great place, point, a turning point for them to want to address the river, the Mississippi River and bring everyone to it. So that project, it wasn’t obvious in the beginning here is a site and it’s a park, you know, it’s not obvious that it’s in our wheelhouse or whatever. So you have to think, spend a little time thinking about it. And now we all try to do that with a, some kind of a grid that just speaks to, you know, whether this is a, there’s ambition there that you can sense, the values that the the brief embodies, the kind of feasibility of it, like, if it’s from our side, and from their side, I guess, and then just, does it make sense for us to be the ones doing it? Like, maybe we’re not the best suited and we can steer that elsewhere? Or maybe we have no chance of ever winning it? And, with the way that we’re thinking about it. So, you know, those are, those are the kind of criteria and the mechanics in this grid that we use to assess the things 

 Miljački 16:10
Do you feel you find yourself in a position now at least to be able to convince your clients or the public or kind of constituents that are involved to go along, or to agree with some of the interests and commitments that you have?  

Gang  16:27
Well, Ana, that’s interesting because I feel so privileged now that we have projects and clients coming to us that share or they’re like minded, you know, that there’s always something reason why they came, and there’s something that we connect about. And so sometimes it’s, they, maybe, like during a project, there’s, sometimes we’ll bring something that they didn’t think about, sometimes they actually bring something we didn’t think about. So, you know, we can work together towards something. 

Miljački 17:06
The conversation.  

 Gang  17:07
Yeah. And it’s different than in the beginning, right, where you are just trying to get a project. And so I think the takeaway is that any project can help can, if you think about what is important about it, even if it’s an everyday thing, you know, maybe, maybe there’s something about it, that can shift a little and it helps you define your interests. So you, sometimes you have to just take a project that doesn’t on the surface seem like anything. I started out with community centers, I mean, in, all around in Chicago, different neighborhoods. But they’re not like, it doesn’t seem super glamorous or anything on the surface. But what I learned from that was just talking to different communities and learning what matters to them. Seeing, after it’s complete, like, how it is important to a neighborhood, how it can change the way people feel about their community. And then I learned other things about it, that I now, we take into all of our projects, because almost every project is about being a community center in a certain way, even if it’s a residential high rise, there’s a community aspect to it. So that’s just to say that, you know, now maybe we’re lucky enough to have like minded clients, but there’s always a kernel that you can find to connect with. 

Miljački 18:40
I also heard something in your response that’s maybe about the kind of particular situatedness in Chicago, that obviously you’re you’re doing many other things now beyond Chicago, but maybe we’ll get back to that a little bit, too, sort of learning from your own kind of home.  

 Gang  18:59
Yeah.  

Miljački 19:02
I really love this one other quote that I collected somewhere, researching for today, it’s from you. And it says buildings more than any other products of a creative process are manifestations of societal values. In order to make them architects must interact and collaborate with clients, governments, professionals of diverse disciplines, and the variety of stakeholders. And when this is sort of refracted against the vast body of your studios work, it makes me wonder, some of the things that we started talking about, do you have any criteria for how you engage all or any of these collaborators? What makes for a good developer for example? Are there any preferences you might have when it comes to engaging institutions or even types of work? Ground up, adaptive reuse, tall, small, like sort of, are there any sort of criteria there or in terms of stakeholders, collaborators, conversants, and the kind of architectural objects that might be arriving at the end of that process. 

Gang  20:08
Well, I mean, you meet people where they are, and all these, I love working with different kinds of organizations. And what’s really interesting is they make decisions in different ways. And so they behave in different ways. And so I think it’s just seeing the whole landscape of that from, you know, developers to not for profits, and some developers or not for profits, to institutions, higher education, individuals, they all have different ways of making decisions, but also identifying where they think that they will be successful. And so that’s, I think that’s key to understanding how to work with each of them, and to be effective with them, you know, like, for example, you might have, you might be able to do the greenest possible project ever, with the most social justice goals, when you’re designing a Center for Social Justice leadership, and the client already has that. And that’s one thing. But you know, that’s one building, too, that’s only one building, whereas if you, if you are working with a developer that has a longer reach, and they do many projects, you know, shifting an environmental approach that they might have not done before, like getting over the finish line with them, can change everything for them going forward with other designers and so on. So it’s important to realize what, to get back to this idea of impact, and how do you measure it? It’s more of a, I don’t think, we don’t have like a matrix for measuring the impact. It’s more of a discussion internally, and to see how that could take place. 

Miljački 22:03
So maybe this is still connected to some of that, I’m still sort of arriving at these questions or the meat of the, of this topic from different angles were interested in. We were looking at the little triangular Center for Social Justice and Leadership at the Kalamazoo College, the building that I think you just mentioned, and there’s a little conversation pit in the middle of it. And maybe the question is, because civic engagement is a common trope in many project descriptions in the office, I’m wondering how you negotiate between public needs and institutional or other types of clients? Or how do you think of your allegiances in a project? Or maybe how do you negotiate those allegiances? 

Gang  22:54
I guess that that is something where, you know, we were really starting pretty early with this idea of engagement. And, it’s, I take that back, I think, there has been that from the 60s, onward, there has been, there have been firms that are doing social impact and engagement and all that kind of thing. But as a, I think it’s just different as a firm that’s known for our design, and more in the league of international known design firms, whatever, for us to do that was maybe a little different. And, but I think we didn’t, I knew there was something missing in our way of engaging and so, and that also, maybe some people know how to do it within the office. And some people have never been experienced in that, it’s not exactly something that was taught in architecture school. So we engage someone to help us do workshops to learn more about, how to talk with people, how to understand what they’re saying, how to just get them to, you know, tell you what they think. So, we were developing our skills on the one hand, and usually on the client side, it’s really about trying to understand where their comfort zone is with engagement process, like, is it in the spectrum, really just informing community? Or are they interested in, in letting more of that come through into the design process? And so, again, it’s working together with the client, I guess, and the organization to find the best way to make that engagement. And it does not always at the outset of, we’ve had projects where it, an opportunity came up during the project that already was begun, but like, could we do a youth leadership group and with a local youth and try to bring them into this process? You know, and that that was an, actually a real thing that happened with the developer, and they really embraced that, and did it with us. So it’s not a straightforward answer. I think it’s, again, it gets back to this, like, trying to meet people where they are and move the needle on like engagement.  

Miljački 25:42
I like this notion.  

 Gang  25:44
Yeah. There’s also this this other thing that started happening more in New York than elsewhere, but there’s now a kind of a really competent group of people that have started to make engagement their work, and sometimes they’re architects. So that’s interesting. On the downside, though, I mean, it’s kind of like, takes it more out, more again, out of our realm of doing it. So in a way, it’s becoming a consultancy, which is good, because it’s, people are being consulted. But then again, I always worry about, like, when we lose, we as architects, lose capacities, you know, and we get more and more narrowed into a different kind of practice.  

Miljački 26:33
It sounded to me like you were, in folding these questions into the practice, and the idea that there are workshops internally for kind of helping maybe close the gap that the academia has already produced, right, in some way, on the topic of engagement seems important. But for me, it’s also just a question of, again, back to the matrix that you said you don’t have, but the matrix of priorities and how one navigates or how your firm or you navigate those priorities, because obviously, there are many interests and notions and ideas about where impact happens, and different sort of constituents that get impacted. So how do you sort of manage that complexity is part of the question, not that there is like a simple answer. But that’s where we’re, that’s where we’re kind of going, scratching that question. And you’ve already begun saying something about the fact that, you know, criteria for thinking about work have transformed since 97 till now, but I wanted to see if you could tell us a little bit about how have criteria for the work that you take on and pursue and work that you don’t take on changes over the course of the lifespan of the firm? And what would be the kind of major factors for that change?  

Gang  27:57
Well, one thing would be that having experienced a lot, you become slightly wiser about certain things, like I’ve seen that movie before. And it didn’t work out so well. So you can avoid some of those kinds of things. And then, having a little bit more, let’s say, well, to have something be really interesting, is still like, at the basis of everything, to be, want to do it, to have the exciting design possibilities, exciting movement towards zero carbon, or innovative social things. And those are always just attractive still. And but now, with a bigger firm, I think we also realize, like, of course, we can’t do everything. And so there’s like limits, but there’s also, maybe it’s helpful to talk about competitions, because those are ones where you say no because, you know, it might be an interesting idea, but you don’t have capacity, but then you start looking at these things that are like, who do they really want to do this? Are they asking us just to have our name in the ring or, like, you start to think a little bit more about where it’s coming from, and just to not… they’re so expensive to do, a competition it’s a huge investment of time and resources. So you do have to, some responsibility to teams and to your own, soul, like, you don’t want to give it all and then it’s already a done deal. So those are kind of things that we just use our you know, past experience on, just talk over like those kinds of considerations. 

Miljački 29:55
Maybe this keeps us again, in the kind of direction of what’s challenging and interesting, but in an interview with Ann Lui for that monograph, the recent monograph you talked about the desire to share discovery as a kind of drive for the work. And somewhere in the same book you talk about, or there’s a nod to research on tall buildings, which, you know, obviously exemplified in the body of work on tall buildings. But I thought that it would be interesting to talk about the place of research in the work, in the office, and also the role of sort of initiating or self initiating research, and maybe projects internally. 

Gang  30:38
Yeah, that’s a great topic and question because sometimes research topics come out of projects, and you think, Oh, that is something we could go further with that. Sometimes they’re just what’s happening in the world, like, this is, like right now, with the crisis of migrants, or climate crisis, or all these, there’s plenty of things to choose from. But those things affect us too, as human beings. And we often think, like, could architecture have something to offer to this situation, not that it can solve everything, but it is part of our environment, and our environment defines us. So sometimes those topics come up independently of projects. And then they might start out with just reading like an academic approach, you know, reading on the topic, who’s writing about it? What, what are some policy suggestions that have been made, and then trying to think if those policy suggestions, for example, could be materialized into architecture or space or public space, or environments, so they could last? At some point, it’s time to test it with a project, even if you just have to make it up yourself, the project. We did that, I guess, with, when, with Polis station, which was really about how could these investments that we have, which are public buildings that are called police stations, or different things in different cities, how could they serve communities or build trust, better relationships between police and community members? And that was not a project that was offered to us by police or communities, we thought of testing it. And kind of getting back to something I said earlier, which is like this, these sound byte things. Weirdly, that project ended up being, like, seen as an investment in police, I think by some people, so it was kind of like, cancelled by certain groups without even really seeing what it was, which was saying way ahead of time, like, we need to invest in communities. But anyway, that’s just to say that, anytime you do something like this, you’re putting yourself out there for criticism but the point is to implicate architecture in the world and to show that it can to explore, let’s say, not show, but to explore what it can do. What it can’t do even. That’s what’s exciting about what we do, I think, so, yes, it is a risk. But it’s also if no, if we don’t take that risk or push it, then we’re just, I don’t know how to say that nicely, then we’re just, it’s a service provider. Service provider is not necessarily bad, because there is a service needed. But we are… 

Miljački 34:08
… more than that? 

Gang  34:10
Yes, haha. 

Miljački 34:10
So maybe the question there, a kind of a mechanical question is, you know, I like the response. But more like, how do you carve out the space necessary for research? Or what is the kind of, that, maybe not space, but time, in, within the projects or around projects that somehow you’re able to support in the office, right?  

Gang  34:35
Well, you know, these are things that cost time and yeah, and research and people and so you try to, there’s some things that are a little bit ongoing. I mean, we have, we do have researchers in the office and people working on that that are dedicated to that. But usually you need other architects also participating. And so it’s, it’s not easy, I would say, to do that, and you have to find, and now that this is more of a practice that we have, we’re better at allocating the resources to it and the time that we can afford to do it. And with some kind of goal, it’s not just oh, it’s so interesting, but it’s towards something that can be seen by others, or engaged with others and are in dialogue with others. So it might end up in, into a book project, or an exhibition, or, you know, maybe sometimes even a real project, like the work that we did on the Chicago River and its pollution, and it’s bad state of affairs, let’s say, and the unawareness of most people about it. Work that we did on that was partnering with people like NRDC or, you know, other foundations, that could help bring about something. It actually that ended up in a project, in doing a project for these boat houses to give access to the river and to create the idea being, to create a whole new generation of stewards for the river, like go make it bigger than ourselves, somehow. I love that. And that project is great, because it’s now a while ago, but an ongoing observation of, like, what’s happening with the river, it’s a real renaissance of, and just so many people are connected to it, and doing things for it. And it’s just, it’s snowballed in a way over the 10 years, since we started with that project, so that’s, that feels good. And it’s like, you can see the power of that. So that’s, I get really excited about that kind of thing. 

Miljački 37:15
The way you did describe sort of research flowing through the office in ways that remind me of a band jamming, so I’m starting to see, I’m starting to see that, how that analogy might work in the context of the office. Now, I watched you show various birds nests in a short video about the office. And in this one, you also demonstrated how water melts its paths through a big ice cube. And of course, both of these are providing material and formal inspiration, and maybe lessons from the environmental and ecological realm for architecture. On the other hand, you also offer this contradictory coupling of actionable idealism as a driver. And I wondered if it would be fair to try to connect between those two in some way? Or would you say that you precisely keep the formal and the political on separate registers, and there is value in doing that, for particular reasons? are sort of just can we connect these two realms?  

Gang  38:42
Hmm.   

Miljački 38:43
And is it worth doing that?  

Gang  38:44
Yeah. Well, the actionable idealism is really like, that for me, it came up because people were like, Why are you interested in this? Why are you doing that? It’s really a why thing, because I want to see, I am idealistic, and we are idealistic. But then we get motivated by seeing something happen. Make progress on some idea. And so that’s more like a why thing. But then yes, it does connect because when you think about, you are looking for these analogies maybe to design or it’s, maybe it’s how the design might be made, or, what it’s made out of, or what it does for people, those are, those are like getting, coming together between material ideas. Like the nest, for example, is just well, birds only use a nest for one time when they are, and then they build a new one. So I just want to say that because I don’t, I think what I learned from them, though, is that, there’s this use of all these available materials, things that are nearby. And this light touch of energy put into those structures. But they serve a really important purpose. And they’re very local. So they make a good, let’s say, metaphor for a project, like that. And so they’re inspiring. To me, a lot of animal architecture is inspiring for that reason for how minimal energy can go to the maximal comfort. And then with the materials, when you start thinking about, we used to think about reusing materials, like using it in something that’s taken from a demolished building, and how can we reuse that? But now it’s more like, how can we reuse whole buildings? And what are some really, what are the most successful ways of reducing embodied energy in projects? Those are kind of really interesting questions, when you think about the means and methods of a building. How can we as architects, a lot of people already start out like, I want to tear this down and start a new building. So can we bring some intelligence to that, to help people make smart decisions about what they already have? And if they’re, if it’s needed to get rid of it? Or could it, you know, be amplified or added to, to save all that carbon that’s already in the building, and just increase the intensity of the use of the building, though, that’s really exciting. So, let’s see, I got lost, I’m talking about just in general, everything we do is not just the form, but the form is important, is super important. Because beauty is important. And people, inspiring people is important. But it’s also like, how does it become? How does it get made? I love working on projects that care about that. 

Miljački 42:23
That’s great. Can I go back to birds for a second? I wanted to go back to birds because they are also understood as constituents in some of your work. And I know that the studio has been advocating for or you specifically have been advocating for regulations that might save birds in the world of tall glass towers. So I thought that would be something interesting to also discuss, the kind of advocacy or maybe idealism around the birds, that actually becomes eventually a kind of regulation.  

Gang  43:20
Oh, you know, I love this question, because you give me the opportunity to talk about this issue. But, this is a perfect thing, like what we were talking about with architects are in this position, there’s a technical aspect, there’s an educational aspect, like people don’t even know that this exists. And then there’s the design, like how do we do it beautifully, elegantly? And it’s, yes, we need regulation. Because, when I was, I remember growing up in the late, there was no law that said you had to wear a seatbelt so people didn’t wear them. And it’s just like, it’s so simple a thing. So with bird strikes and buildings, it’s, there’s actually just, there’s zones that are more difficult than others. It’s not like to say, every piece of glass has to follow these rules. So I’m working hard right now on getting our city in Chicago to adapt regulations for bird safety, just I mean, because I think a lot of times, maybe architects don’t even know, the solutions. So it’s just something, it’s one of those problems that in a way, architects are very positioned well to help solve it. Because if you’re only looking at it from the bird, ornithology point of view, it’s a problem. It has to be solved but you don’t know what to do to solve it. If you’re looking at it from the other end of the spectrum, let’s say it’s concern about cost or something from a developer trying to do a new building, there’s a fear and like, No, we don’t want to have these rules. And so there is a place where you can find out where it’s effective, what kinds of things can be done. And you can work with industry to come up with interesting solutions. So I just, I think it’s such a great example of what architects can do. And of course, as an environmentalist myself, and as a person who loves living things, I cared deeply about it, like when you see the numbers of how many birds are killed annually running into buildings that they can’t see. And it is one of, again, it’s one of these complex things. It’s not just one situation. So it takes some education, but architects are capable of it. I mean, come on, we can handle multiple issues. I mean, there’s the issue of transparency, which is most difficult, like on, let’s say, those glass bridges that go cross. And there’s the difficulty of reflection that we have with certain types of glass, and lighting and various different things. But they’re all not that complicated. If you just look at each particular thing. 

Miljački 46:31
I wanted to maybe still keep talking about or continue talking about advocacy. We’re running out of time. So maybe we go to this sort of, in your, in this same recent monograph GSD’s former Dean Mohsen Mostafavi describes your work in the kind of two main categories. There’s the kind of the very large, tall buildings, he says the focus on exteriority and  arrested movement, emblematic of many of the large scale projects is countered by greater attention to interiority in many of the smaller buildings. In these projects, the use and performance of the building often go hand in hand with its material and construction qualities. And I was wondering if you agree with this characterization? And can we talk about the kinds of criteria that you tend to have when making material and tectonic choices? And we already talked about building having vibes or beauty, but I am quoting you, sort of, building having a vibe strong enough to invite users and stewards? And I’m imagining that there are sort of links between these concerns? 

Gang  47:44
Yeah, I think similar to how we were talking about clients are different and how they make decisions, there’s also different places you can have impact, let’s say, in the form of a building, depending on its scale, and on its use. And how do you find that place that you can help it, and I think with tall buildings, I’ve always been interested in the exteriority, like, occupying the exterior of it. And, you know, mind you, in the beginning with, when we did the Aqua Tower, it was just not, there were not tall buildings with balconies, they didn’t exist. And it was just something that was like, wow, that’s just so missing, how can you get the outside space that you have in a smaller dwelling? So that was a really a focus, and drive, and then, how those buildings perform in their environments and how they meet the ground. And those are kind of the things to deal with, when it comes to tall buildings. Because inside it’s almost like infrastructure, you just have, there’s a lot of people accommodated there. And of course, they have their own taste, they have their own style, and I love that, I want them to do their own thing. And I don’t want to control every action of every person that lives in a high rise. I want them to be able to express themselves in that building type. And then, on a smaller scale building where you’re creating an environment like a theater, or a museum, or a space where there’s public engagement that come and experience it, there’s just a lot more opportunity to work spatially with light, with the way that people, the choreography of the movement through the space, I would say, and just that, so you are in charge of that experience. It’s not the same as the residential thing where I want the person that lives there to be in charge of their private space. So yeah, I guess they’re different just because it’s so different. I mean, but again, you need to know that or don’t waste your efforts on something that is not in your purview. 

Miljački 50:10
So I just saw the announcement that you’re building at Harvard, the David Rubenstein Tree House, or the Harvard Enterprise Research Campus, is breaking ground, and it is Harvard’s first mass timber building. And what do you think of that? Or how has it been working on that?  

Gang  50:30
Well, it’s such an honor to work at Harvard, a place that I’ve been so connected to for so long. And to do a project, that’s, what I like programmatically is it’s a conference center. So it’s not just part of a private hotel that’s used as conference center, it is our conference center and can be used by different groups in Harvard, and doing mass timber construction, but at the same time, working with all of the standards and everything that Harvard has, from their vast experience of making buildings, that’s the kind of key challenge of it, and, together as partners, and with Tishman Spire too is we’ve, we’re getting there, and we’re gonna get there. So it’s pretty cool. You know, it made me think about, like, where this would come from, one step is getting a building of a renewable material, but then is, where does this material come from? So there’s a lot in that I’m really interested in right now. And that’s kind of like the result of working on this project in a certain way. 

Miljački 52:54
All right, we have just a few more questions. How big is your studio now? And do you have any procedures in place by which you both expose the office or studio to the realities of running the office? And do you invite your team to think collectively about the commissions you will and will not take? 

Gang  53:19
I’d say, for just the purposes of efficiency, we have a smaller group really weighing those pros and cons in the beginning, and then it gets presented to a slightly larger group that discusses it further. And then if we do decide to take something, we do tell people that this is something we’re doing and why. And that’s an interesting question, because, like, one example that I have of that is when we were invited to compete for the Theodore Roosevelt museum library. And, this was right at exactly at the time when there’s all this controversy about Theodore Roosevelt statue in front of the AMNH. So it was really close to home. But that was such an interesting example, because we weren’t just going after this to be like, you know, here’s the museum in the cap and another commission, it to me, it presented an opportunity to really drill down into this issue of like, the legacy of a person that, at the one hand, did some amazing things for conservation in the United States and, but then had other aspects of his time and his personality that were, to us seem objectionable. So, but the organizers of the competition were assuring us they wanted to do an even-handed representation of this person and it’s such an important person in the history of the US, I didn’t want to just, I didn’t want to say no. And, and again, it wasn’t because this is prestigous, this is, a big fee, it was just because it’s interesting. And it brings forth these difficult aspects. And so what we did as a group, when we explained, this is something we’re going to be doing, here’s the team. We want, we made a kind of a reading list, a book list of a variety of books about Roosevelt and his legacy. And then we had a book club on that. So that was kind of ongoing. And it was so interesting. I mean, and I think, in the beginning, there were like a young person in the office who said I don’t want to work on that. But then, when we started to work through these, really interesting, difficult issues, that kind of went away and everybody wanted to work on it. But so that’s just an example of, the, it’s not a democratic process of how we decide to go after work. But we do try to flush it out with everyone at the right time. 

Miljački 56:23
This is the last one for you. How would you describe the conditions in which Studio Gang does its best to work? Are all commissions equally exciting, are their ideal commissions, ideal circumstances for commission? 

 Gang  56:37
I think the best work is done when there’s just a real, I’d say, from a mission perspective, lockstep with our client and whoever that is. But then that there is pushback and tensions about what is being proposed and how it will be made. And it’s, I mean, there needs to be some tension there to to make it really good. And, I mean, it’s kind of a cliche that people say, a good client makes a good project. But there’s truth to it in that. If both the architect and the client are really committed to this vision, visionary thing that they want, then it’s going to be better than if it’s like, say someone is, I’ve had this situation where people came and say, can you just do another Aqua Tower? Because that was good, and we just want that. But that’s a bit difficult. You know. So I think that’s true that the best work comes out of this productive tension and cultivating what those points are going to be, and so that you can sort through them together.   

Miljački 58:14
Excellent. All right. Jeanne, thank you very much for talking to me today. And listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of I Would Prefer Not To.  

Gang  58:24
Thanks Ana. That was so much fun, talking about this subject.