Q+A WITH JEANNE GANG

Interview by Katya Tylevich

The Chicago architect on how to build a livable city Interview by Katya Tylevich

WHILE RUSHING THROUGH O’HARE AIRPORT to catch a flight, Jeanne Gang, founding principal of Studio Gang in Chicago and New York, considers the importance of slowing down – not in her own practice necessarily, but in how to catalyze meaningful interactions between strangers. She envisions buildings where neighbours take the time to talk to one another, and cities where inhabitants value unhurried walks along waterfronts as much as they do quick drives on highways. She also imagines these purposefully engaged communities to include birds and insects. In fact, Gang considers the health of human life to be contingent on the health of natural ecological systems, particularly in cities. In 2010, at the age of 46, she completed Aqua Tower, an 82-storey mixed-use building in Chicago whose influential facade is an experiment in social behaviour. Its asymmetrical balconies were designed to encourage residents to meet one another outside, above street level, and even to foster relations between neighbours on different floors (a rarity within most condominiums). Aqua’s success has led to other buildings by the firm that employ what’s been dubbed “inhabitable facades,” where balconies provide opportunities for connection without compromising privacy. In this alternative way of thinking, architecture and urban planning are potential antidotes to the fragmented and isolating city. “Instead of thinking of architecture