The Primacy of Relationships and the Reclamation of Beauty: Jeanne Gang: Observed and Interviewed

摘要

There is a charming straightforwardness about Jeanne Gang herself, along with an architecture that is eminently responsible, sensible and identifiable. Observing her in full flight, with the offices of her firm Studio Gang in Chicago, NewYork, San Francisco and Paris, we see buildings responding to their very different milieux. This lack of pretentiousness in her lectures and interviews is echoed in the buildings themselves, spelling out a clarity of solution to a clearly digested issue - often social. Yet one is aware, with both the person and the work, of there being rich, even complex undercurrents. If the conspicuously bright American Midwestern daughter of an engineer and a community activist might be expected to produce tough and serious buildings, their formal lyricism tempts one to speculate upon her less explainable instinct for pleasing-looking elements, surfaces and thus aesthetics. Particularly in the context of most of her contemporaries' discomfort in this territory.