9/15/2023 0 Comments Jahn skyscraper chicago![]() And so you have to think about - I think about the light. And because you're building very tall, you're also, you know, going way above your neighbors. GANG: I think for the tall ones, there is a real responsibility to the public space and to the base of the tower. SIMON: What do you think makes a great building? And it really - it does an incredible amount to reduce how much stiffness you have to have in the building. But then, to reduce the wind more and to be able to use less material for the building, we found we could do a void up there, high up in the building, so the wind passes right through. Actually, we use water on the top in a big tank, and it sloshes around. GANG: But to counteract that, you put a heavy weight of some sort up at the top that moves at a different rate than the building, and that kind of cancels out that movement. SIMON: And let me explain to our people listening, I mean, in Chicago, it's very common to be in a tall building that creaks. So we have to do a couple of things to make it comfortable when you're way up at the top. With tall buildings, they're - essentially they're cantilevers coming out of the ground, so the wind affects them a lot. And one time I went to an alumni dinner, and I met the developer that ultimately hired me to build this building and the Aqua Tower. GANG: I just started my career in Chicago, and I was working on community centers. SIMON: What put the skyscraper in your musts? I was - I always just liked making the space to get into or go up into treehouses, and, you know, whatever. Did you ever build, like, forts and treehouses and such? SIMON: So you're growing up in a place where you can see the way Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan and so many great names kind of cast their signature into the skyline of this great city. But I think the small town gave me the sense of community and also a connection to nature that I still try to keep present in the work. And so it did impress me a lot when I was growing up and coming from a small town. So you come out of your way to go see it. Because the Midwest is so flat, it's almost like Chicago is, like, a mountain range. Growing up in Belvidere, like, Chicago is - was our major city for museums and for, you know, for visiting. ![]() SIMON: You grew up in Belvidere, Ill., about 70 miles from here. GANG: Well, as a matter of fact, one of my professors told me one time, you know, Jeanne, you know, it's great that you're studying architecture, but, you know, do you think a man really wants to hire a woman to design buildings? But those kind of things just really got me super excited to, like, prove them wrong, you know what I mean? ![]() SIMON: Did anyone ever tell you you couldn't be an architect or, you know, you ought to go into interior design? GANG: So you can do a little thing like that and multiply it over many floors, and you get an effect that's much different than, you know, what it would be on a shorter building or smaller building. SIMON: It's the way you have arranged it that casts like the shadows of a curve, so the building almost seems to change shape. It's all straight, but stepping, like, 4 inches out, out, out. You know what? You said it was curvaceous, but there's not one curve in this building. ![]() I don't know how to describe it - three columns, curvaceous, if I may, both reaching toward the sky and reaching up from, like, the center of the earth. Jeanne Gang has joined the company of giants in a skyline that bristles with buildings by Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe and Helmut Jahn, with skyscrapers that can seem to change shapes and colors with sun and water. On the block is the 82-story Aqua Tower, which used to hold that title. It is now the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. High-rises that make you gasp, like her latest creation, the 101-story St. When Jeanne Gang ran into glass ceilings, she built skyscrapers. ![]()
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