Jeanne Gang

Gang was born in Belvidere, Illinois, where her father was the engineer for Boone County. She graduated from Belvidere High School in 1982, then earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois in 1986; during her third year, she studied in Versailles, France at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles. In 1993 she earned a Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In 1989, Gang was awarded an Ambassadorial Scholarship from the Rotary Foundation to study at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).

Gang worked with OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and Booth Hansen in Chicago before establishing Studio Gang Architects in Chicago in 1997.

Gang has extensive built work in the Chicago area, beginning with the Starlight Theatre at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois, a 1997 commission. In 2016, the Chicago Tribune named her one of its Chicagoans of the Year, and the following year Surface called her one of the most prominent Chicago architects of her generation. She was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower (2010), her first skyscraper, which at the time of its completion was the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. The nearby St. Regis Chicago, also of her design, has since taken the title. She has also designed several academic buildings in the region, boathouses on the Chicago River, and the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo. In 2019, the team led by Gang won the international competition to design the new Global Terminal at O'Hare International Airport.

She has also completed several projects in New York City, including the Richard Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History Other major projects in the United States include the renovation and expansion of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, the expansion of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the new campus for California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and the Center for Arts & Innovation at Spelman College in Atlanta.

Internationally, Studio Gang was selected in 2016 to design the new United States Embassy in Brasília, Brazil. The University of Chicago Center in Paris opened in 2024; Q Residences in Amsterdam, the firm's first project in Europe, was completed in 2022. Studio Gang's work has been widely honored, published, and exhibited.

Gang prioritizes ecologically sensitive design and also social responsibility. Her Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College is the first building designed specifically for social justice and uses cordwood masonry, which she found "an old-school hippie" to teach; and some of her community projects are low-budget, such as the SOS Children's Villages Lavezzorio Community Center, which used donated concrete. Among Studio Gang's planning projects is a guide to re-envisioning and improving the Civic Commons published in 2016.

Gang is a Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she has taught since 2011 and in 2017 was the John Portman Design Critic in Architecture. She has also been a visiting studio critic at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the Cullinan Visiting Professor at the Rice University School of Architecture, a visiting lecturer at the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Louis I. Kahn Junior Visiting Professor at the Yale University School of Architecture, and a studio critic at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She also lectures frequently. In 2016, she presented at the TED Women conference. On May 11, 2024, she delivered the commencement speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Gang is married to Mark Schendel.