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