Jeanne Gang
Jeanne Gang
Founding Principa at Studio Gang
It’s not enough that Jeanne Gang is building what will soon be the tallest building in the world designed by a woman—a 98-story skyscraper in Chicago called Vista Tower. The Chicago-based architect is slowly reshaping New York City, too. Her firm, Studio Gang, completed its first building in the Big Apple last year. The property, a boutique office building in the Meatpacking called the Solar Carve, looks like someone sliced the side off a traditional glass office property and etched a series of curved diamonds onto its face.
“I think of glass as a metal now,” Gang told New York magazine last year. “It’s a hybrid material, and I want it to be present, not go away. I’m embracing the metallic aspect and seeing what we can do with it.”
Gang’s buildings often look like they’re in motion. 11 Hoyt, a 57-story condominium tower under construction in Downtown Brooklyn, has a slightly twisted and stepped facade that curves around a large outdoor space on the third floor. Similarly, the 39-story Mira condo tower in San Francisco has the facade of a dramatically twisted rectangular tower, with lines of windows snaking upward.
Here in New York, Studio Gang is also working on a $383 million, organic-looking addition to the American Museum of Natural History, called the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation. The white, rounded structure almost looks like the inside of a giant dinosaur skeleton, and incorporates large, round openings in the sides for windows, in the top for a skylight, and in the front for a glass entryway, allowing light in from all sides.
And last year, she completed a more neighborhood-oriented project, a new firehouse and training facility in Brownsville, Brooklyn, for FDNY Rescue Company 2. The interior features a 45-foot-tall atrium with a climbing wall that simulates building exteriors, a manhole leading to a chamber that can fill with fake smoke, and an elevator that can be set to malfunction, all of which are supposed to simulate real fire-fighting situations. The facade has bright red terra-cotta tiles and cutouts that are meant to convey transparency, and in some cases, serve as exits.—R.B.R.
