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.