The Art of Architectural Grafting

How can architecture learn from nature to combat climate change? Jeanne Gang, Founding Partner of Studio Gang, will share her practice’s approach to bringing new life to existing buildings and urban lands through designing strategic additions. Drawing on her most recent book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, Gang will explore how the horticultural practice of grafting –which joins a new plant to an older one, so they can grow and thrive as one – can be applied to architecture at multiple scales.

Biography:

Jeanne Gang, FAIA, is the founding partner of Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Known for an inquisitive, forward-looking approach to design that unfolds new technical and material possibilities and expands the active role of designers in society, she creates striking places that connect people with each other, their communities, and the environment.

Her diverse, award-winning portfolio includes cultural centers that convene diverse audiences, public spaces that generate positive social and ecological impact, and high-rise towers that foster community. Notable among these are the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the reimagined Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock; and the University of Chicago John W. Boyer Center in Paris.

Her ongoing projects throughout the Americas and Europe include the new United States Embassy in Brasília; an expansion of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock; and the David Rubenstein Treehouse, Harvard University’s first mass timber building.

Intertwined with built work, Jeanne and the Studio develop research, publications, and exhibitions that push design’s ability to create public awareness and give rise to change—a practice Jeanne calls “actionable idealism.” Her latest book, The Art of Architectural Grafting was released last year in English and French editions.

A MacArthur Fellow and a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Jeanne has been named one of the most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. She is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Officer in the National Order of the Legion of Honor, and a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters. She has been recognized with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the Charlotte Perriand Award, and the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.