Studio Gang: Combining Architecture and Activism
The studio, which just completed the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Richard Gilder Center in Manhattan, uses architecture to lift underserved communities.
The Arkansas Arts Center consisted of eight buildings that had been cobbled together over the years in an unthoughtful and incongruous manner since the museum opened in a park in the state's capital of Little Rock in 1937.
This spring, out of the previously dysfunctional maze of structures, emerged the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, a luminous space of galleries, an art school, a theater and restaurant linked together by a curving, river-like central spine that forms the museum's atrium, connecting north and south entrances that are covered by a petal-shaped roof that funnels rainwater into gardens of native trees, shrubs and flowering perennials.
The 133,000-square-foot, $170 million AMFA, its unveiling seven years in the making, is the result of the vision of Studio Gang, the internationally acclaimed architecture and urban design firm that's also responsible for the reimagining of the recently opened Richard Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, yet another feat in refashioning a discombobulated building into one that simply makes more sense.
Studio Gang, founded by Jeanne Gang, a Harvard professor and MacArthur Fellow, among numerous other accolades, has a portfolio of plenty of projects over the years in major cities including New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Chicago, where Studio Gang is designing a new global terminal at O'Hare International Airport, expected to be completed in 2028.
But as a firm driven by social justice, creating community spaces and environmental activism, the projects it undertakes in places like Little Rock carry perhaps greater significance in the exploration of how architecture can play a role in combating systemic racial injustice and empowering marginalized communities.
“What is really wonderful about projects in smaller towns is that the impact the project can have on the town is really beyond maybe what a project can achieve in a big city,” says Juliane Wolf, Studio Gang design principal and partner. “A singular project can have a huge impact, and that is hopefully going to be the case as well for the Arkansas museum where it can help revitalize that portion of Little Rock.”
The AMFA in Little Rock sits alongside an interstate that, when built, destroyed much of the historic Black community spaces in the city, with the road still continuing to racially divide the state capital into more affluent white neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods girded by crime, poverty and veiled redlining.
“It certainly came up, and we were aware of it,” Wolf says of the division. “We started the project with a lot of research that also related to the demographics of the place and wanting to create a building that is really an invitation
to everyone. Often cultural institutions struggle with that, where they can have an image that is actually not inviting to everyone.”
Tom Lee Park, which stretches along the Mississippi River in Memphis, is slated to open in September, and is another example of a project aimed at bridging past chasms of injustice that continue to permeate the present day. Working with landscape architecture firm SCAPE, Studio Gang requested input from thousands of residents to create a more inclusive outdoor space that has a divisive history rooted in Southern agriculture and the slave trade.
“It was a fascinating project because the riverfront [in Memphis] is historically actually very important,” Wolf says. “It was not always an easy history to uncover. We were able to talk to many Memphians to understand the meaning and the historic occurrences of the riverfront, and then out of that came the opportunity to help stitch the park back together with the city, to help get people closer to the river.
“For us, location is not necessarily the main driver,” Wolf says. “It is more the mission of the project and the institution.”
In 2014, Studio Gang completed the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Its design plan, according to Studio Gang's description of the project, “encourages convening in configurations that begin to break down psychological and cultural barriers between people and help facilitate understanding.”
A former coal-burning power plant in Beloit,
Wisconsin, was transformed into a student center focused on recreation and wellness for Beloit College while revitalizing the town's riverfront. An old tobacco warehouse is being transformed into a new design college at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The project is slated for completion sometime this year.
“From the detail scale upward, the project aims to demonstrate that reconciling past and future isn't simply a matter of environmental necessity, it can also be a satisfying creative act of design and making,” Studio Gang renderings of the University of Kentucky College of Design renderings said.
Wolf says some projects are selected because of the existing structures, the ability to manipulate them and reuse building materials to minimize the carbon footprint of additional construction.
“Building from scratch on a greenfield site can be easier,” Wolf says. “When you build within an existing building, there are things you only know after you take down some of the walls. It's more difficult, but we think the outcome is worth it.”
The post-pandemic world continues to present opportunities for the evolution of Studio Gang's portfolio as requests come to adapt office spaces as a result of the paradigm shift in the ways people work. “There is a need for the work environment to become better than your general office tower floor plan,” Wolf says. “There is a need to create an environment that offers something people can't have at home.”
In Paris, an academic building for the University of Chicago is underway. A center for innovation and the arts at Spelman, a historically Black women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, is planned for completion in 2024. Populous, a hotel under construction in Denver that has a façade inspired by aspen trees, is also scheduled to be finished next year. In Brasilia, Studio Gang is designing a new U.S. Embassy.
“We don't ever show up and know what we are going to do,” Wolf says. “It is always first understanding what is there, and then responding to what is there.”
In Paris, an academic building for the University of Chicago is underway. A center for innovation and the arts at Spelman, a historically Black women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, is planned for completion in 2024. Populous, a hotel under construction in Denver that has a façade inspired by aspen trees, is also scheduled to be finished next year. In Brasilia, Studio Gang is designing a new U.S. Embassy.
“We don't ever show up and know what we are going to do,” Wolf says. “It is always first understanding what is there, and then responding to what is there.”