PROFILES THE URBAN WILD

An architect's visionfor a new kind ifaquarium.

BY A MY WALDMA N

olphin Bay, at the Texas State that dabbled in conservation to being a to glide, it instead popped up, then down. D Aquarium, in Corpus Christi, is a conservation organization iliat has an "I'm so glad we saw the wild dolphins twelve-foot-deep, pale-blue pool with a aquarium. And, at a time ofgrowing pub­ first," she said after the Dolphin Bay concrete bottom. It is home to Kai and lic w1ease about keeping cetaceans in cap­ show. "The students on the boat were Shadow, two Atlantic bottlenose dol­ tivity, it was contemplating something making all these sounds: 'Oh, oh.'Today, phins the color of storm clouds. Twice a unprecedented: moving its eight dolphins they were just sitting there, horrified." day, they perform in a show that is meant to a sanctuary. Gang hasn't been to a zoo since child­ to inspire visitors to "help protect our For months, Gangread up on the cog­ hood. Her discomfort witl1 cetaceans in planet," the m.c. tells the audience. For nitive and social capabilities of dolphins. captivity is partly a matter of personal the promise of dead fish, the dolphins At Rice University, in Houston, where ethics, but it's also a response to poor de­ ferry rubber ducks, leap and twirl, and she was teaching for a semester, she asked sign. There must be a better way to inspire wave and bow to the beats of Katy Perry. her class to design dolphin sanctuaries. city dwellers to care for the vast, invisible At the beginning of the show and again On the weekend ofthe dolphin show, she wilderness that is the ocean, she believes, toward the end, Kai and Shadow rise on had brought eleven students to the Gulf than by using "a swimming pool painted cue to flap their pectoral fins for their cor­ Coast to do research. She was also con­ blue with dolphins swimming around.'' porate sponsor, Whataburger. ducting research of her own. The day be­ On a Sunday in March, Jeanne Gang fore the show, the group drove to Port he offices ofStudio Gang Architects sat in the bleachers and looked out onto Aransas, Texas, and boarded a thirty-six­ T occupy an entire floor above an Aldo the bay that flows next to the aquarium. foot catamaran called the Kohoot".::. As the shoe store in the Wicker Park neighbor­ A pod of dolphins was surfacing among boat headed out into the Corpus Christi hood ofChicago . To reflect the firm's col­ the waves, though most of the audience ship channel, Gang and a few students laborative nature, the plan is open: only seemed not to notice. The juxtaposition climbed to the top deck. The air teemed Gang has an office, and it is walled with of captive and wild transfixed Gang. with birds: Gang pointed to a brown pel­ glass. The windows are plentiful, the nat­ '~lump!" she urged Kai and Shadow after ican flying by, then to a colony of white ural light abundant, the recycling obses­ the show, halfinjest Gang, who is fifty, ones resting on an island shore. But the sive. The space smells of freshly milled has striking blue-gray eyes, brown curls, sea, the least architected space on the wood, except for the model shop, whicl1 and a casual air. She is best known for planet, stretched blankly before her. smells ofepoxy. The whir and drone ofits designing Aqua, a tower in Chicago, Noiliing hinted at the life beneath ilie power tools often filter into meetings. which was completed in 2010. To maxi­ waves until a bulletin came over the loud­ Pieces ofwood, concrete, and marble mize views and shade, she unevenly dis­ speaker: "There's some dolphins over are everywhere in the studio. Material re­ tended the concrete balconies on each there." seard1 is Gang's "playtime," she says, and floor, creating a rippling surface that "Oh!" Gang exclaimed. It was her also integral to her work. ln 2003, at the suggests a natural topography- hills, first glimpse of dolphins in the wild, al­ NationalBuildi.ngMuseum,in Washing­ valleys, pools- rising into the air. At though wild was a relative term. The dol­ ton, D.C., she created an eighteen-foot­ eight hw1dred and fifty-nine feet, it is phins frolicked near a built-up shoreline high curtain from six hundred and twenty the tallest structure ever designed by a and played in surf churned up by a giant puzzle pieces of marble cut so thin that female-led firm. barge. Even the Jimmy Buffett blasting tl1e light shone through, revealing what Design awards, a MacArthur Fow1da­ through the boat's speakers was an at­ she calls the stone's "secret mystery." The tion fellowship, and intemational acclaim tempt to "speak'' to the cetaceans, which, curtain hung in tension, its fifteen hun­ foUowed ilie building's construction. the boat's captains believe, now recognize dred pounds barely touching the floor. No More tower commissions did not, in part the steel drun1s and sax notes reverberat­ one, to Gang's knowledge, had tried this because of the global recession. Instead, ing through its aluminum frame. "I'm with stone before. Gang took her practice deeper into an amazed they coexist with all tlus," Gang Gang loves wood. At Lincoln Park area of long-standing interest: ilie rela­ told her students. Zoo, she wanted to bend a kiosk into tionship between nature and culture. Last For the next hour, Gangwatcl1ed dol­ the shape of a tortoiseshell; she con­ year, the National Aquarium, in Balti­ phins surface and then dive back into the sulted boatbuilders to learn how. For the more, asked her to help express, through water. She and her students cooed over a final structure, smalllan1inated pieces design, a signal change in its mission. It cl1ocolate-brown newborn small enough of Douglas fir were soaked and then wanted to move from being an aquarium to slip through a pair ofhands. Too young glued together to make curved ribs that

7 4 THE NEW YOI\KEI\. MAY 19, 2014 'It's impossible to replicate nature-it's too good, "j eanne Gang says. 'It's about trying to find that space where it's art. "

PHOTOGRAPH BY JENNY HUESTON THE NEW YOI\KEI\, MAY 19, 2014 75 snapped together, with fibreglass pods clean the rainwater. Today, South Pond "natural" enough. "It's impossible to rep­ between, on the site. For a social-justice is a thriving metropolis of insects, licate nature-it's too good," Gang told center now being built at Kalarnawo ducks, migrating birds, butterflies, tur­ me. "It's about trying to find that space College, Gang revived a local vernacular tles, even coyotes-"a wo without cages," where it's art." tradition of using cordwood instead of Gang c.,-ills it. The reeds next to a board­ bricks for masonry. She found "an old­ walk that she also designed rustle with ang grew up in the small town of school hippie," as she describes him, to hidden life. G Belvidere, about seventy miles train her staff and contractors. Embed­ Gang wants to restore wildness to na­ nmthwest of Chicago. She spent most of ded in mortar, the crosscut white-cedar ture in urban settings. But she also be­ her free time outside, building tree houses logs evoke, in their density, a tightly lieves in using design to make nature and forts, roaming the preserved rem­ packed crowd. "legible," as she puts it. On the edge of nants ofwilderne ss on the edge of town. Gang has little interest in form alone Lake Michigan, construction is under Her father was the civil engineer for and has written critically ofmaster refiners way on a far larger Gang project: a plan Boone Cotmty, and he took Gang on for­ who simply hone the same design and de­ to turn Northerly Ishnd, a ninety-one­ mative early-morning trips to look at tails at ever greater cost. Blair Kamin, the acre man-made peninsula that once bridges, roads, and natural landscapes. longtime architecture critic for the Chi­ housed a small airport, into a vast public Her mother, a community activist and cago Tribune, credits her for refusing, park. Gang's design includes an amphi­ later a librarian, also influenced her: Gang after Aqua, to "indulge in a facile repeat of theatre, a concrete reef to soften the prefers projects that tackle social prob­ that success." Her marriage of thinking waves, and hills to offer rest to migrating lems, notably how to create environmen­ and building, he believes, places her in the birds and views to humans. On a fall tally sustainable cities. H er mother led tradition ofRem Koolhaas, for whom she morning, in finger-stiffening cold, Gang Gang's Girl Scout troop, an experience once worked. And her attention to mate­ walked next to the lake, which groaned she replicates, in a fashion, each sum­ rial and detail, Kamin adds, recalls Louis audibly in the wind. She was looking for mer, when she holds a rustic retreat Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. birds, of which there were few, but the for her staff, often instructing them in a None of Gang's structures resemble setting provided compensation: the sky Scout skill. one another. Some of her projects are marbled witl1 clouds and light, the water Her practice has an active research not structures at all. At Lincoln Park a pale metallic blue, the wild grasses a se­ arm that intersects with but also oper­ Zoo, where she built her tortoise kiosk, ductive burnt orange. Some landscape ates independently from her projects, she revived a stagnant pond by deepen­ architects had criticized her site plan, compiling discoveries about everything ing it, ripping out a concrete rim, and which also featured paths and a mosaic from water systems to ecology to tower edging it with plants that would help of hexagonal plantings, for not looking typologies. Her first step on a new proj­ ect is to assemble a relevant library of science, history, art, maps, even fiction. When Chicago's mayor, Rahm Eman­ uel, asked her to design two new boat­ houses along the Chicago River, Gang looked at the prints of the nineteenth­ century photographer Eadweard Muy­ bridge, who captured, in stop-motion images, the articulated movements of rowers. Her design re-creates the rhytlun with structure: the roof undulates like an oar's rise and fall. Because the peaks repeat, so do the clerestory windows, which suffuse the space with southern light. In a workout room, the natural warp of the plywood that sheathes the roof trusses makes the ceiling look like the bottom of a boat. One spring day in 2012, Gang and her boathouse team gathered in a room whose walls were papered with construction drawings. The project was on an unusu­ ally tight schedule: Emanuel wanted the first boathouse opened by the summer of 2013. (It opened that fall.) Her team had been "working like crazy," Gang said . 'That's why they look really tired right "O.K, children- now comes thefon part!" now." ('We don't think we look that bad," one young architect joked when Gang schedule, a warning she seemed to only can sometimes seem solitary. She collab­ stepped away.) halfheed . Schendel is lean, short-haired, orates widely, but mostly with non-archi­ Gang had just visited Princeton's boat­ and hyper-organized. His motto, at­ tects. She has little time to spend with house, and its well-lit, well-used club tached to every e-mail, is "Accuracy, friends. "My colleagues are my friends," room had made her wony about her boat­ Neatness & Concentration." From his she said, then added, "They work for me, house's equivalent. "How are we conceiv­ hub in the middle ofthe studio, Schendel so maybe they don't see it that way." Her ing ofit ?" she asked the team. She wanted supervises the firm's staff of fifty-six and firm is mostly female, but the developers, to better w1derstand the placement ofthe keeps projects on budget and on time. In engineers, and contractors on most proj­ columns and the trusses in the room, how architecture, where more often the man ects are not. Nowhere is this more true, the roofwould look, where the light came is the lead designer, theirs is an unusual Gang says, tl1an in the building oftowers : in. She began to think out loud, scribbling partnership. "He supports she is often the only woman revisions on drawings. She had already me," Gang says. "It's in his in the room. added, the previous day, an open staircase DNA." to connect the first and second levels of They met in 1993 while nstitutions, like materials, the boathouse. Now she reoriented the working for Rem Koolhaas, I have secret lives. Few vis­ rowing tanks so that they wouldn't face in Rotterdam, where Gang itors to the National Aquar­ the glare ofth .e sun, relocated the storage had moved after completing iwn's tranquil new attraction, of chairs ("Phew, I'm feeling better," she graduate school, at Harvard. Blacktip Reef, a painstaking said, once she had them safely tucked out Gang recalls telling Schen­ assemblage of artificial coral ofsight), and added panels ofnatural light del that "I didn't want to over which black- tipped to the bathrooms. work for men, I didn't want sharks, stingrays, and a res­ The project leaders were men. Gang to be bossed by them. It made me W1Com­ cued three-flippered sea turtle glide, know was solicitous oftheir opinions and com­ fortable. I didn't want to be shunted into that the space housed a dolphin "tray" fortable overruling them. Her manner, interior design, and I saw how these prac­ when the aquariwn opened, in 1981. The low key, even reserved, only somewhat tices work. I wanted the freedom to ex­ tray was small, with only two hundred and obscures her drive. plore my own interests." She decided to sixty thousand gallons ofwater; and it was "Have you guys ever put a backpack in settle in Chicago, and Sd1endel soon fol­ dark, chlorinated, and, with reverberating a foot-deep shelf?" she asked at one point, lowed. The city, despite its storied skyline, pumps, noisy. Within months ofits open­ critiquing a series ofcubbyholes. had become architecturally sleepy by the ing, one dolphin was dead and three oth.­ "I don't carry a backpack." mid-nineteen-nineties, a void that Gang erS had been shipped off, with ulcers, to a "How about your guitar?" hoped to fill. So far, all of her built work dolphin swim program in Florida, where As she drew, she asked whether the is in the Midwest, most of it in or near one still lives today. changes she had made would add "tons Chicago. (She was recently d1osen to de­ 'Nhen the aquariwn next tried housing of time." sign a firehouse in Brooklyn.) dolphins, the tank was five times larger, 'Well, yes," came a reluctant response. Gang and Schendel live in a century­ the light in the glass Marine Mammal Pa­ "It's not that much- we already did old apartment with thick walls and huge vilion plentiful, and the soundproofing the stair last night," Gang said. windows that look out onto Miclligan and science more advanced. For more She asked if they were modelling the Avenue. They have customized the than two decades, the dolphins did up to second boathouse, which was at an ear­ space with a sleek Italian kitd1en (Schen­ seven shows a day, until, in 2011, John lier stage. No models, the team told her, del is the primary cook) and doorways Racanelli took over as chief executive. In blaming the "constant fire drill" of the heightened to nine feet or more. I n his first week, two of the aquarium's dol­ expedited schedule. Gang countered place of interior walls are stepped book­ phin calves died, of unrelated causes. A that they could make a model from the cases that their cats can climb. Part of year later, he retired the dolphin shows. elevation drawings, which portray a one shelf is given over to dirt-russet, Racanelli is a surfer, a sailor, a swim­ building's fayade: "Let's do it now!" As green, brown, gray, and white soil-col­ mer, and a diver, and a lifelong advocate her weary team mostly watched, she lected by Gang during her travels and for the ocean. He was one ofthe first em­ began to cut the drawings and fold and displayed in an arresting collage of tiny, ployees at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, tape them into three-dimensional ob­ stacked acrylic vitrines. where cetaceans have never been dis­ jects. "This is so helpful compared to The couple have no children (Schen­ played. In a 2011 speech, he dismissed the looking at elevations," she said when she del has a son from a previous marriage), notion that captive dolphins and whales finished. and they spend most of their time work­ are "ambassadors for their species" as a The task of helping the team execute ing. "It's exhilarating work," Schendel "well-wom familiar old saw," one that was Gang's changes and, when the schedule says. And demanding: Gang often visits becoming less relevant eacl1 year. In place became imperilled, stopping her from three cities in a week. She must compete of the shows at the National Aquarium, making more would fall to Mark Schen­ for commissions against 1'lrger, more es­ he threw open the pavilion doors, so that de~ the firm's managing principal and also tablished firms, and break the news to her visitors can wander in at leisure and stay her husband. He had peeked in on the junior architects when they lose. Only a as long as they please. The dolphins way to a dentist appointment to remind small number of female architects in the mostly swim and sleep, and at infonnal Gang that they were on a "very, very tight'' U.S. are as prominent, and her singularity intervals display, in conjunction witl1 their

THE NEW YOI\KEI\, MAY 19, 2014 77 trainers, learned behaviors such as fetch­ ing rings or aerial leaps. But many visitors still come expecting a show, in part be­ cause the architecture--bleachers arrayed around the tank-cues them to. 'We trained the humans" to expect dolphins to perform, Racanelli says. The new ap­ proach, perhaps unique among aquari­ W11S, aims to retrain them. Bayley, the youngest of the eight dol­ phins, is five. The oldest, Nani, is forty­ two. Racanelli would prefer that they not live out their years in a tank. "There are chimp sanctuaries, orangutan sanctuaries, gorilla sanctuaries, elephant sanctuaries, big-cat sanctuaries, bird sanctuaries," he says. "And there's probably a lot of sanc­ tuaries I don't even know about- horses and police dogs. And there's not yet a dol­ phin sanctuary. What's that about?" He considered creating a sanctuary, perhaps a series of sea pens, in a different location, and using the pavilion for another pur­ pose. He sought out Gang to create a new master plan for the aquarium. They met in 2012, when Racanelli, Gang, and Schendel joined a research tow·, organized by a London-based firm, IMPACTS Research and Development, Aqua, the Chicago skyscraper that made Gang an architectural star. to evaluate European museums. The firm's founder, an American named Scott Inner Harbor, its brutalist architechtre inhabitants. "I want to change how hu­ Corwon, helps museums and similar in­ drew acclaim. It was aquarium as the­ manity views the ocean," he told Gang. stitutions draw more visitors and assess atre: the architect, Peter C hermayeff, She asked, in response, how humanity whether a proposed new building or at­ was also an aspiring filnunaker, and the views the ocean now. After ingesting ma­ traction will find enough of an audience interior layout "directs" visitors, as in a terials ranging from "The Sea: A Cultural to justifY its expense. Usually, he says, the long tracking shot, using darkness and History'' to the ocean explorer Robert answer is no. Gang had been collaborat­ light, ascent and descent, to create Ballard's TED talk, she produced a history ing with Corwon to test some of her de­ drama. Over the years, the aquarium ex­ of a human relationship with the ocean sign ideas. Too much ofarch itecture, she panded, adding glass pyramids for new that has been characterized by romance believes, involved small boards of trust­ exhibition areas, including, in 1991, the and ignorance. Only five per cent of the ees inventing visitor projections to justifY dolphin pavilion, on Pier 4. The addi­ ocean has been explored. NASA's budget is their whims. (Co1won describes this tions have created so much confusion more than three times that of the Na­ thinking as "If you build it, they will that today human "greeters" wait at key tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin­ come.") Gang wanted data that would points to direct visitors; it can be difficult istration. Hundreds ofexplorers have un­ tell her whether a design would resonate to successfully navigate the building on dertaken space travel, Gang noted, but with the public. your own. Racanelli wanted more clar­ only a handful have ever reached the Mar­ Racanelli h.'!s worked with Corwon for ity, and more choice for visitors. He iana Trench, the deepest part of the years, and learned more about Gang from wanted more connection to the harbor, world's oceans. How could anyone per­ him. That she had no experience design­ to which the building now turns a cold, suade the public to help protect some- "' ing aquariums was part ofher appeal: Ra­ concrete shoulder. He wanted a new thing it knew so little about? ~ canelli and his board ofdirectors wanted identity for Pier 4. And, ifthe aquarium In thinking about the aquariurn's ~ a conceptual thinker. "The thing these was still going to offer theatre, it would dolphins, Gang read books like "In ~ guys do that I've never seen before is just be theatre with a purpose. As climate Defense of Dolphins" and "The Dol- fil ignore the rules and come up with a great change, overfishing, pollution, and the hin in the Mirror," both ofwhich make S P <1 idea," he says ofGang and Schendel. hunt for resources alter the sea's chem­ the argument for dolphins as sentient ~ Racanelli aimed to keep the National istry and ecology, he hoped to mobilize creatures. New research (often con- ~ Aquarium's building but transform the the aquarium's 1.3 million amlUal visi­ ducted, paradoxically, on captive dol- "'~ experience it offered. \Nhen the aquar­ tors--and its far larger audience on so­ phins) has revealed new cetacean capa- ~ ium opened, on Pier 3 in Baltimore's cial media-on behalf of the sea and its bilities. The same qualities that led to 8

78 THE NEW YOI\K:EI\. MAY 19, 2014 Gang's boathouses on the Chicago River are inspired by Eadweard M uybridge's stop-motion photographs ifmoving rowers. dolphin captivity-their charisma, their market-test some of the ideas presented, derwater tube in the Chesapeake Bay, for intelligence, their sociability-are now and the project leader, Claire Cahan­ visitors to walk through. Currently, only a becoming arguments against it. Gang be­ moved to the meeting room. They sat at bridge connects the piers. lieves that the public is slowly turning a round table while Gang stood, for three "I don't know how to price it or put a against confining cetaceans, in part be­ hours, presenting preliminary ideas and number on it," she said. cause of documentaries like "Blackfish" panying questions. She began with rela­ "A lot of zeros," Racanelli quipped. and "The Cove." tively simple fixes for the building's poor The idea was brilliant, he said, but the Corwon's research seems to bear her fl.ow and discontinuities. Move the en­ execution might be not just expensive out. He has been tracking attitudes on the trance, now hard to find, to where the cafe but challenging. Also, because pollu­ subject for eight years. His data show a is currently situated, and move the cafe to tion has made the Chesapeake murky, generation gap: millen.nials (those under the waterside. Realign the escalators that ''I'm not sure what you would see." thirty) are more likely than older Ameri­ take visitors up to e.xh.ibits so there would Gang gently countered, "It makes the cans to oppose keeping marine mammals be less confusion. Embed a shallow "no­ whole thing connect in an exciting way, in captivity. Corwon offers an analogy to depth" river in the floor as a way-finder, as an interesting way. You're going on an attitudes toward gay marriage: "It's chang­ Gang's architectural heroine, Lina Bo adventure." ing slowly, it's changing slowly-it changed. Bardi, had once done in a community "I'm not ruling out the tube," Ra­ Even very learned people think it's going center in Brazil. canelli said. to be a glide path. It's not- it's going to "Are you depicting it as covered with He reacted with enthusiasm to other do what every other movement does." His acrylic, or as open water?" Racanelli asked. suggestions. Gang wanted to perch a wet­ hand moved sideways, to indicate a pla­ "Open water," Gang replied. land in the slip between Piers 3 and 4. It teau, then shot up. In his view, an aquar­ Racanelli laughed. Kids would splash would more closely unite the piers and ium that builds a dolphin tank to attract in the river. His operations guys would help to re-green the polluted harbor. Ra­ visitors may eventually repel them. hate it. The disabled might face egress canelli called it "a fantastic public exhibit problems because of it: "Ifyou have to run anybody gets to see from our shore." And n early March, Racanelli flew to Chi­ from a fire, you can't be dodging a strean1." he liked the idea for a barnacle-shaped ad­ I cago to hear some of Gang's design The water would have to be covered dition-a party space with commanding proposals. After a lunch of vegetarian somehow. views of the harbor-atop Chermayeff's ramen in the open kitchen, the group-­ Gang also proposed connecting the original building. Schendel, Racanelli, Cmwon, who would aquarium's two piers with an acrylic un- 'This building is so determined in its

THE NEW YOI\KEI\, MAY 19, 2014 79 angles and triangles;' Gang said. "It needs trained to move in the event of a storm. i.ng oftubes for Lexingron, Kentucky. For something-" The group briefly discussed a step be­ Hyderabad, India, a cube surrounding a "-that breaks it," Racanelli said, yond a sanctuary: one day releasing the courtyard; for Shanghai, a series of finishing her thought. dolphins into the ocean. Racanelli believes linked hexagons. In front, a glass office "The building is so robust it can take that, ifdone very gradually, it might work building for a site next to the High Line, it," Gang said. for some of the aquariwn's dolphins, per­ in New York, the model glowing like a "Debrutalizing the brutalism," Ra­ haps by intermixing them with wild dol­ giant crystal. Each was an evolution of canelli said. phins, so that the captive ones could learn Gang's thinking about how to build Soon, Gang came to the question of survival behaviors. But he considers release densely, efficiently, and evocatively. But, Pier 4, and, as she phrased it, ''\¥hat to do a "real, real long shot," and at the March of the designs displayed, only Aqua had with that building ifthere are no dolphins meeting his primary concern was whether been built, and most of the others were there." Her initial idea was to make it an the dolphins could make even the transi­ languishing. educational center, with labs and class­ tion to a sanctuary unharmed. Untrained Leaving the Art Institute one day, rooms, and a place to reveal more of the dolphins captured from the wild were walking quickly, as she always does, Gang aquarium's hidden work. Her team had once called "niive" within the marine­ sounded almost wistful: "Sometimes I feel measured the National Aquariwn's floor mammal trade. Now that adjective is more like rm moving at a snail's pace, but then space and discovered, even to Racanelli's often used for those bred or raised in cap­ I look up at that''-s he turned around and surprise, that nearly two- thirds was de­ tivity. His dolphins, he told the group, are gestured at Aqua-"and say, 'I built an voted to back-of- the- house operations like "city kids. They're not just city kids. eighty-two-story building."' When she like breeding animals and growing coral. They're city kids who live i.n an oxygen hears people say that architects peak late, Why not make more of those activities tent- they're the boy in the bubble. We're she is glad. She wants to keep building. public? Show the fish kitchen, where food trying to get the boy out of the bubble, To secure her legacy, she will have to. gets prepared, or the lab where water into the open air." Blair Kamin, the architecture critic, says, quality is tested. "Aqua is not a perfect building, which is But none of Gang's ideas for Pier 4 wo years ago, the Art Institute of important to recognize, because Jeanne is could come to fruition as long as the dol­ TChicago mounted an exhibition of young. I hope she will have other chances: phins remained there. She presented two Studio Gang's work, a rare honor for a liv­ that is where we will see if she can realize possible models for a sanctuary: a remote ing architect. The exhibit included a table­ her enormous potential." location, which would keep the dolphins ful of her tower designs-models made Tishman Speyer has asked her to isolated from hwnan contact; or a setting from foam, wood, cardboard, plastic, and build a tower in San Francisco, albeit closer to an urban center, which might paper, all bunched together like spectators much smaller than Aqua. And James allow for more public education. She at a parade. Here stood a building, meant Loewenberg, the developer of Aqua, even offered a design for a hurricane shel­ for Vancouver, with the shape and the tex­ who took a chance on a young Gang ter, into which the dolphins could be ture of a tree trunk. Over there, a group- after meeting her at a Harvard alumni dinner, is in the process of obtaining financing for another tower by her. It would rise near Aqua. When Loewen­ berg .first asked Gang for a design, two years ago, she was in Paris; she locked herself in her hotel room to sketch and then to model, using paper and tape from tl1e front desk. Her design nestles together three buildings, which softly zigzag in and out as mey rise. The mid­ dle building will straddle a road. The design has been evolving ever since, in response to financial constraints and technical challenges: how to provide enough support for such a large structure without erasing the shape, for instance, or whether that support should come pri­ marily from concrete or from steel, so that the two trades aren't competing to lead during construction. Mter building Aqua together, she and Loewenberg, who is eighty and blunt, have an easy rapport. At one point, he warned Gang that he was ''How did I become someone who has a screamingjit about a going to talk her out of the trapezoidal stupidgift bag filled with little plastic things?" windows she envisioned for her structure, because they would be too expensive to replace. Gang laughed him off: "H e doesn't really know what he's talking about, and neither do I, but I know I want to make something tapering. We'll test out what it looks like, and we'll have to prove it." Advances in computer technology have made it possible for a practice as small as Studio Gang Architects to do tall buildings, which once would have re­ quired teams of draftsmen. Gang loves the process of building skyscrapers: how to make the elevators work in a building shared by renters, owners, and hotel guests, for example-she compares the transport system to a "vertical street''--o r how to use design to lower energy con­ sumption. And she relishes the efficiency with which decisions have to be made. There is no board to please, no commu­ nity to consult. '1t's rapid-fire," she says. "You make decisions and move on. Jim doesn't care what iterations you went through. He just wants to know what you want to do and why and does it work." "Would you like to hear tonight's specials, or have you For a brief time, it appeared as if already closed yourselves to new experiences?" the new tower might approach "super­ tall" status, a designation granted by the • • Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats when a building reaches nine hundred and eighty-four feet. (The cur­ late May. O nly if the resulting science sand dolphins are known to have died in rent version ofthe tower is shorter.) "f ve concludes that his dolphins would thrive the past year from the morbillivirus, a been noticing that in our office, whenever will Racanelli attempt a sanctuary. He measles-like infection. "There has to be we talk about height, the guys get really would still need to find a way to pay for i t. a way to inspire people to care for wild excited about it," Gang joked one day, And he and his board would need to be whales and dolphins," he says. then conceded, "I guess I have the ego sure that the loss of the dolphins and the Gang believes that the design ofinsti ­ thing, too. It's just wanting to go further visitors they draw would not compromise tutions such as museums or aquariums and beyond what we did with Aqua. I'd the aquarium's financial health. not only reflects human culture but can be breaking another bow1dary." Racanelli's board will likely decide by also shape it. No less than dolphins, we For a female architect? the end of summer which pieces of are capable ofbeing trained, and architec­ "No!" Gang laughed. "Just for mysel£" Gang's blueprint to adopt. If the dol­ ture is one means of doing so. One day, phins are to be moved, Racanelli and perhaps, visitors to what was the Marine n building towers, Gang is creating Gang want to preserve a link to them, Mammal Pavilion will sit in its bleachers, I habitats for humans who choose to perhaps by video feed, so that Baltimore or a remnant ofthem, and watch live foot­ wall themselves in. The National Aquar­ will not feel that it is losing something. age, on a huge screen, of the Baltimore ium presents the inverse challenge: how to Even more, they want to use the chal­ dolphins in their ocean sanctuary. Perhaps create a new habitat for creatures that lenges of returning the dolphins to an some kind ofre ef will be implanted in the were not meant for captivity but have ocean setting to teach the public about sanctuary, to attract fish on which the dol­ nonetheless spent their lives in it. In con­ the lives of, and threats to, their wild phins can feed. As the animals slowly re­ templating the future of the dolphins, cousins. Of the aquarium's eight dol­ vert to their natural behaviors, the people Gang knew she was up against the limits phins, Nani is the only one to have been watching remotely will learn both what of her, or anyone's, knowledge. She sug­ born in the wild. 'The world that Nani those behaviors are and what kind of en­ gested to Racanelli that he convene a left and the world she'd be returning to vironment will best foster them. swnmit ofexperts-amo ng them, veteri­ are much changed, and unfortw1ately not ''You could tell the whole story of the narians, marine biologists, animal psy­ at all for the better," Racanelli says. Sea­ ocean, and the threats to it, through the chologists, and structural engineers-to water has been poisoned by compounds dolphins," Gang says. "It's much easier to discuss the risks and the complexities ofa like fire retardants and mercury. Along do that if they are in a sanctuary, rather sanctuary. The meeting is scheduled for the Eastern Seaboard, more than a thou- than performing." •

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