Thursday, September 22, 2011



I am an architecture nut, blessed to live near one of the greatest cities in the world for architecture. While my interests lean more toward the Prairie School than skyscrapers, a new building in Chicago has quickly become my all time favorite building. I love to show the building to the daughters of friends because it is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman - a concrete example, literally and figuratively, of possibilities for young women. It's great height is impressive but it is the design that is remarkable, making it a building like no other on the planet. It is called the Aqua building, and I hope that you will visit it and marvel at the most expressive building I've ever seen.


Others must be just as impressed as me. It's designer, Jeanne Gang, just won a MacArthur Genius Grant.


"The annual list of MacArthur Fellows is out -- and for the first time in more than a decade there is an architect among the winners. Jeanne Gang, the 47-year-old founder of Studio Gang Architects, joins 21 other honorees this year; each of them will receive a $500,000 cash prize from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that famously comes with no strings attached."


Read more:     Gang Wins Genius Grant     LA Times
Read more:     On Her Precipice       by Nadine Post : Architectural Record
Read more:     Jean Gang Architect     by Sara Goldsmith : Slate Magazine