 Good evening everyone, my name is Caroline Bowman. I'm the director, wow, I asked for light, I got it. I'm the director of Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and I am absolutely thrilled to welcome you tonight to our second in the Design Talk series and I'm especially joyous because the curators and I just had a wonderful meeting with Jeannie Gang and she is very generously giving us many drawings and a model for the permanent collection of Cooper Hewitt. So thank you Jeannie. Very excited to welcome you as the newest designer in our permanent collection. So it's a wonderful way to start our evening. Cooper Hewitt's purpose is to inspire, educate and empower people through design. We do this through exhibitions, education programs, our National Design Awards and online content and discussion. This series design talks is generously supported by the Adobe Foundation and it's meant to promote dialogue about current issues in design and it's a chance for us to highlight great practitioners working in design today. This year, we are featuring the winners of the 2013 National Design Awards. Later this month, we will discuss public space in today's cities with the legendary Michael Sorkin and James Wines. In April, we will have landscape architect, Margie Rudick and Jeanette Sadi Khan talking about the repurposing of the urban landscape. And in May, we will speak about interior architecture with Adeland Darling Design. Check our website for more information and on that note, we're having a few technical difficulties but we should be having this webcast live tonight and it'll be available on our website as well after tonight's event. As many of you know, you made it, good. As many of you know, Cooper Hewitt is undergoing a massive renovation and it is the reason why we are here rather than at our main campus at Two East 91st Street. And we're not only expanding our space by 60% but we're improving all of our facilities and we can't wait to welcome you back which will probably be in late fall of 2014. But the main thing to get excited about is we're really taking this opportunity which in the end will be three years to completely reinvent what Cooper Hewitt is about and what the museum experience is about. And I'm keeping that mysterious because there are obviously some surprises that we'll be announcing as we get closer to the opening. But again, fasten your seat belts because it'll be a wonderful ride once we reopen the museum. We're collaborating, if you can believe it, with eight different design teams, Dillers Caffidio and Renfro and Think Design on the reinstallation of our exhibitions and local projects as our media team. And it will be quite incredible changing you, our visitor, from an observer to a participant, really learning about design and becoming a designer yourself. Tonight, we are delighted to welcome National Design Award-winning architect and MacArthur fellow, Jeannie Gang. Jeannie is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based collective of architects, designers and thinkers practicing internationally. Gang uses architecture as a medium of active response to contemporary issues and their impact on human experience. Each project resonates with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as urbanization, climate and sustainability. The firm's projects range from tall buildings like the Aqua Tower to the nature boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo. Studio Gang's work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and museums across the nation. A little bit about the format tonight, Jeannie will first talk about her work and its inspiration and then we'll be joined by David Vandalier of the Van Allen Institute. Before I welcome Jeannie to the stage, I'd like to show a short clip that we actually shared with our guests at the National Design Awards this year. I like seeing design in both big and small things from a bridge and how it's created to small details in a building. And I think that's a great thing about architecture. It can span over those breaths between giant, enormous city plans to real touchable physical material. It's not an act of just my own personal will that I'm putting on a building. It has to work for people and how they use it. And that's really how the building gets shaped. It's really asking yourself those questions. How is this going to liberate the users to be able to use this building in new ways? How is it gonna help the way that they work or see the world? And then you have to really understand that before jumping into the form making. Please join me in welcoming Jeannie to the stage. You're so tall. That's okay. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me tonight. I'm really pleased to be able to talk about my work directly with you and to really talk a little bit more about the process that we go through for design. And hopefully have maybe some, I just created a few suggestions at the end of ways to use creativity toward solving problems and toward making an impact with design. And so the research, how it informs the work and also at the end we'll be able to have a conversation that finds some similar topics with David van der Leer as well. So I'm wondering if we can have the lights down maybe just a little bit. Design is a process for us that really comes out of the things that we are interested in and the curiosities that arise within us. And sometimes projects maybe don't even have a client. And those projects, those research projects tend to be the ones that end up informing our projects for clients. One project, research project that we completed recently was this book called Reverse Effect. And it was a book really to communicate with the public about some important issues about the Chicago River and issues of flooding, invasive species and some opportunities with a post-industrial edge around this river. And we timed this book being released to correspond to some policy work that was going on. So we collaborated on this project with the Natural Resources Defense Council who was interested in addressing river issues in Chicago. So I'm gonna start the talk kind of up at the Great Lakes and then end it more down for the Gulf of Mexico. But the Reverse Effect really was influenced by both because the city of Chicago about 100 years ago reversed the flow of the Chicago River in order to save drinking water. And in doing so, they kind of flushed the pollution downstream ending up in the Gulf. In the meantime, many of these invasive species of fish were starting to move up the Mississippi River and threatening to move into the Great Lakes. So this is an image of the canals that were designed huge massive public projects about 100 years ago that were really connecting these water flows across the subcontinental divide. So essentially taking Lake water, which is Gulf, which is a glacial melt and really connecting it to the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf. So 26 miles of canals were made and as time went on, the issue started to become apparent. The one of them is the invasive species of carp that are making their way up to the Great Lakes and could have a really big impact on the fishing businesses, on recreation. They tend to like to jump out of the water when you go by with your boat. So it makes the recreational aspect of boating kind of treacherous, really scary. Actually you could see the fish up in the corner in that one. They're about 90 pound fish that jump out. But there were also many other problems as well with the river, including industrial waste and sewage being flushed into this river. And so our project, the book I was showing you was really about designing a series of steps that could be taken to improve the quality. And so realizing that this couldn't be done all at once in one fell swoop, how could you imagine taking a series of steps that would have a positive impact? And if you look at step number one, which is really the second image up there, one of the things about step number one is to really encourage the city to acquire property along the river where the industry was moving out and also to increase the public's access to the river edge. So part of the problem of river pollution is just that no one had access to it and they don't have access to it and they don't want access to it maybe because it's dirty. And so the real idea is to increase that access. And then when people have that as a natural resource, they will suddenly start to care about it and we actually found people that were using it and caring about it. So the idea would be to disconnect those canals and to eventually in the long run, start to reclaim and recycle all the waste water and put it back into the lakes. The lakes are actually all glacial melt so once that water is gone, it's kind of a closed system and it won't be replaced. So this would be a future idea. So I think one of the qualities architects can bring to public projects is really taking the science and trying to sort through that and making it visible for people to understand what solutions could be. So we kind of imagined this is what the city looks like now with a lot of this industry kind of evacuating along the edge and what it could look like in the future once these freshwater lagoons are installed. And so this was, like I said, a piece that was supposed to help people understand the issues of the river, especially in time with some very important policy that was coming out. So I feel like part of the role of the architect is to communicate these ideas to the greater public. What came about though and how that shapes into an actual project was that this first step was actually starting to happen and the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, decided to make a series of public access points along the rivers and install, in this case, two boat houses, one on the north side and one on the south side of Chicago. And there were two others as well that were these are rowing facilities for clubs that would also have programs for the public. So what we did there was start to embark on a design project that would implement some of our ideas about the river and bring that public access forward. We had a very short, limited time to design this project. This is the first one of the Chicago Boat Houses and it was located on a park site where the club was actually rowing out of already. And this is a physical model of the site. So the rowers that brave the Chicago River today are a couple of teams that are cross city teams with lots of different participants from different high schools and they go out there in all weather and try to row on this river. For our design process, because it was so condensed, we kind of relied on something that we already knew about which was these Moibridge images of rowing and looking at the motion of the rowing, studying also how the ore actually moves through the water. So you can see we're kind of switching gears from this bigger picture of river health to really getting into a design issue and thinking about this motion and trying to translate that into something that could be a building. This was a physical model we made of the ores moving through the water at times every second through one sweep and then translating that into the architecture we moved into thinking about it really as a roof form. You can see in the lower part of this image, the position of the hands and it started to suggest kind of two types of trusses with a sweep in between them. A boat house is such a nice program because it really isn't much pressure on that building to have a lot of mechanical systems or a lot of different things. It really is just to store boats and to work on boats. This is an early model of a mock-up trying to understand the difference between the two trusses and how that might create facets in the facade. And then finally, this is, well, it was just opened this fall. The interior, really very simple materials. You can, this is the structure for the boats which is dimensioned to align with the size of the boats so that really set up the rhythm of the space and you can see the different shape trusses. So it's really just a steel building with plywood cladding that helps that curve be observed in the space. And then in use, the teams are now using this, rowing out of the building and also using the full, the year-round field house for working out and practicing. This is a view of the big apron going down to the river and you can see the two different truss shapes there. And then inside the field house, which is a two structures, there's a tank which can be used for practice in the winter like now. And various, they also do programming so that the teams actually teach people how to row so you can go learn that there and they have programs for disabled people and youth throughout the city. So it's really kind of an infrastructural project in that sense too because it's investing in the waterfront but also in the youth of the city. This is one of the programs that they have for disabled veterans learning to row because of rowing really creates this kind of teamwork and a feeling of progress and success. This is one of the community space in the field house where many events can happen for the community besides just rowing so they can have community meetings and people can rent it out for events and things like that. And this is finally the ERG room it's called at the top of the structure in the two-story building that has again these two different shapes of trusses. These are veer and dill trusses with the warping service in between kind of mimicking the fluidity of the rowing. Outside on the second floor there's a big porch where the parents and people can watch rowers coming back into the city. And then finally this is just a view this is the outdoor bay that houses the coaches boats and then here you can see the location of the building on the Chicago River with the city off to the right. Another project that kind of gets on the research is inspired by the research and we've taken the research further is this project for Linga Park Zoo. It was a 19th century park version of nature in the city and they wanted us to kind of rethink this pond in relation to the surroundings and make it more of a vibrant habitat. So this park was located right within a zoo but we wanted to create here something more of a zoo without cages and really make the habitat so interesting that it would attract different species of animals and start to reinforce the biodiversity of this park within the city. This is a finished image of it. There's a boardwalk that wraps it. Basically we ripped out the edges of the pond and figured out how to use rainwater runoff and clean it with plants in order to replenish the pond. So basically taking it off of the city infrastructure and as well this is interesting because it's acting as stormwater reservoir so it's doing multiple functions. So I think what I really like about this project is it has an architectural component which is this very simple pavilion made with bent wood elements and at the same time it creates almost like a public space and open air pavilion that's supposed to be used for teaching classes but it's used for many different things and it also creates a functioning ecosystem right within the city. And it's become used by many different types of people for anything from yoga classes to the teaching and everybody wants to especially architects get married under this arch with city views and lately it's really attracted a lot of wildlife as well. So there were about 40 nesting pair of black crown night heron that has increased to 400 pair since the park has opened. There's lots of different species that are coming there especially even coyotes which are like attracted to the pond at night. This is a nighttime camera that they installed and so you can, people in the city can actually, there's blog with all kinds of posted images from people all over the city of Chicago that really are coming in very close contact with a kind of version of nature that's much more wild. And lately it's also been used for a dance company that we're collaborating with on another project. So it's kind of really got the architectural, the urban, the urbane and the wildlife all coming together in one project. Just to mention the research as it pertains to towers is oftentimes more of a kind of like formal research and research because towers are so particular in their structure and the way that they are developed. But for our personal, our own office as we've developed almost like a morphology of tower types all coming from the first two ideas that were initiated from the aqua tower. So I think we've done now probably about 16 projects in various states of being finished. But a lot of these ideas really came from that initial project, the aqua tower. And so it's interesting with towers how it's more of a research that has to do with the typology and the use as opposed to some of the ecology ideas I talked about earlier. So aqua was really about this external use of the building creating balconies that people could use and to see each other and to make taking advantage of how tall the building is to create variation over the height of it. So very small changes from floor to floor, the slabs changing very little can create this amazing effect when multiplied by the whole height. So it kind of argues against the idea of the tall building just being an icon, a cartoon outline sketch of a shape. And it's an argument for starting with an incremental small piece and seeing how that can be multiplied. It also has this benefit, the benefit of having a social space on the exterior of the building where neighbors can interact, not necessarily in the elevator. So one thing that came from this and just a quick shot of a project we're working on right now that's in construction, it was really there was this issue of the balcony being a social space that we've taken a little bit further in the next project which is for the city Hyde Park. It's a mixed use residential building in Hyde Park where the University of Chicago is located. And it has a northern exposure and a southern exposure and the balconies are really on the southern exposure. On the north there are operable bay windows. So one of the issues with Aqua that we wanted to improve upon was that there is a continuous slab going from inside to outside so there's some thermal bridging there. So in this case we've created a balcony spiral which is an independent almost like a column that's independent of the interior structure and it just ties back to the interior structure. So it's a column almost like a stack of cards. We worked with several ideas and model to create this structure that would be freestanding. So the way that it works is just a series of wall like columns and slabs that are stacked up like a stack of cards. And then they tie back into the building but they are independent of it. And the way that that is looking in three dimensions is really giving again, it's giving this very lively facade to the building all done with just a simple idea of the incremental balcony. And then I wanted to show you two more projects really quickly the Kalamazoo College Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership which is a project that is currently under construction and it a little bit ties together kind of the research about social issues, environment, but also there's a certain organic quality to it coming from the material research. This is Kalamazoo College. It's a small college in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And they've had a very strong program in social justice where students go out into the world and conceive of projects within social justice and then they actually implement their projects. And this would be a center where the students can come to hear lectures where there will be faculty and seminars and meetings and really a hub for social justice that also ties to the activities going on within Kalamazoo, the city itself. So there's kind of a connection between the college and the city. One of the problems of intervening in this campus from a social justice perspective was just that all of the architecture was kind of a neocolonial style and it just didn't really seem to lend itself to this new mission that was taking place there. And our building, I don't know if I could point to this but in the far left corner of the campus was our building site and adjacent to a grove. So in order to understand the space of social justice, we really started to look at cities, different places, things that were happening in cities and we're very interested in the way that the freedom of a city allows almost a self-organizing order. This is a view that was actually published on CNN's website during the Arab Spring and you could go and see how people organized this city without walls, which was fascinating to understand and very kind of inspiring as an idea. We also looked for precedents that were not, architects wouldn't normally look at maybe some older things like the Native American longhouses that were used for meetings but also traditional buildings in Mali that were for elders with this up in the upper left, this really interesting structure where the elders could have heated discussions but no one could really raise their temper too much because the ceiling is so low you couldn't stand up. It forces you to have a civilized conversation and also step wells and other places we were looking at a lot of these as precedents. The final form for this particular project came to be this kind of three, like a trifoil shaped structure that had three big apertures facing different orientations, one being the neighborhood nearby, the campus architecture and then the grove and in the center is just a convening space, many different ways and different ways that people could see each other, meet and have a conversation. We also learned that the preparation of food really breaks down boundaries as well so there's this kind of open kitchen as well in there and then the idea of the arcs being the different scales of what the Arcus Center would work on in their work. So this kind of developed into these thickened walls along the arc, so the darker program located within the thickened walls. This is the plan as it developed and one really interesting discovery along during design I guess was the figuring out how the materiality of this project would be implemented. We wanted to do something pretty sustainable and local and discovered that there was a wood that could be used, a white cedar that had the range very close by in Michigan and we also discovered that these cedar forests were originally used for buildings such as this, this is like a 100 year old barn that we found that was made with this wood masonry technique looking at it up close. So instead of using brick they actually used logs with mortar in between and what was so fascinating about this was just that as a log you're actually embodying the carbon whereas if you use brick you're really burning the bricks and producing carbon into the atmosphere so if you could somehow get this technique updated to today it would be a really great way to do the center so really the project became a lot about reviving this lost technique, we found just several individual practitioners that were still kind of building a few saunas and things like that with it and we found this guy who we just talked into coming to Kalamazoo and teaching us and our contractors how to do this. I really like the idea that each tree is different, the rings are different and it's all like a reflection of the environment and the amount of water that was there and the growth just like a human being's face is different and so that was kind of an interesting tie to this project. This is one of our workshops where we were learning how to do the wood masonry on a little sample. These are architects from our office up in a summer camp doing a wood masonry and then we kind of started to play with that and what was interesting is we realized we could do a lot of different warping surfaces with this technique because it's such a small element so this is a model showing one of the windows that we developed in the wall. This is still physical models, this is a project that's under construction right now. It's gonna be finished in the fall and we're really excited. I have like maybe one, there's a construction photo looking at the building from above. It happened to be one of the coldest winters ever but they were able to, they're working on this as we speak to finish it out. And then the last thing is just going, tying back to the research and how it kind of has impacted our, the way that we work I guess has led to us working on certain types of projects and so from thinking about water in the lake we're now kind of moving on to water in the ocean I guess and the National Aquarium has asked us to help them think about these four issues that they are dealing with so this is really a more of using research to help an organization with their strategic goals and not necessarily all about architecture it's really about how they can move their organization forward and they had these four kind of burning questions. One of them was they currently have eight dolphins in their collection and as public opinion and as science moves forward we all know that citations are highly intelligent maybe some of you have seen Blackfish or the Cove and so as this new CEO entered the National Aquarium he really wanted to stop having these animals in captivity and one of the first things he did was stop having dolphin shows and so one of the issues is like how, what do you do ethically with the dolphins if you are no longer gonna keep them in captivity so we were helping him explore and we're doing this now like the issue of dolphins in captivity and a lot of the research has been trying to understand all the issues is very complex. In India recently they declared dolphins a non-human persons which is a category and have banned all dolphin shows so there's a kind of a tipping point coming and trying to understand that so this is really just these last slides are showing you like just pulled off the boards not really conclusive in any way yet but showing the process of using drawing and design to understand problems and so and currently I'm teaching a studio down at Rice where the students are also helping sort this out. Dolphin tank standards have changed and that has actually made it more expensive to keep dolphins so places like the UK have stopped building these facilities and are trying to figure out what to do as well these are public aquaria and the ones that have marine mammals in them so it's kind of something that's increasing in number but the problem is getting bigger because then what do you do with all these animals? Another part of that was to help them figure out what to do with the Baltimore facility and make it more connected especially given that on the right in Pier 4 they actually have a dolphin show place an auditorium and what becomes of that. They have a facility in Washington DC that was like in the basement of the commerce department that was being closed for renovation so to help them kind of reconceive what would be going into the DC facility so with a lot of times we'll start in history like looking at what is the ocean and what you know we've all heard of Panjaya but there's also Pantalasa which was describing in according to Greeks the whole one ocean and you can see this drawing of a Greek concept of ocean where it's just one thing so all these waters are actually so connected in their imagination and then there's a political side to the ocean in terms of what territory belongs to whom and what is protected so once you start getting into it's very interesting it's only 2% of the world's oceans are protected but there's a lot of battles going on over the resources and then the way that you measure what ocean belongs to which country is a perimeter around a land mass so even a little island gets a perimeter so it's interesting to think that United States well it's the largest ocean holdings but someplace like New Zealand which is as small as number six so right now studying these economic zones and trying to understand more about this and thinking about the world if you actually look at Google Earth from this one point of view it's almost no land visible so we have so much water but we spend very little time exploring it where NASA's budget is 3.8 billion and NOAA has something like a 23.7 million dollar budget and then we have explored Mars and the moon 100% high resolution mapping and only 5% of the ocean has been mapped and so there's this incredible place right out there that is so unexplored so also right now we're thinking about the imagination and the idea in the early, you know, in the 20th century both the space and the ocean were almost like the same mysterious thing and that's changed so much and today, you know, it's really the ocean is really the more mysterious place so these are just like some summary thoughts about our process it's really about trying to think critically and to trying to reframe what the question is so even though if the National Aquarium is asking us to think about their building it really, sometimes you have to step back and think bigger about what the questions really are I think having the diverse office is really an important thing too because you have all these different people with different backgrounds and that adds to the richness of the solutions that you can come up with and then the space for just, you know, group activity, accepting failures and making it okay to be, to have that space for making lots of ideas, realities and then this one is just calling it fluency because I think it's really important to learn the language of the people you're working with and so if they're talking about marine biology you kind of just have to speed it to a certain degree on that and then understanding who all the users are these are all users that we interviewed about the Chicago River Project so from rowers to fishermen to someone who gives tours along the river all using it in different ways and then testing, this is something lately we've been using big data a lot with over the last maybe four or five years to test solutions before they're implemented and then also just having this luxury to allow yourself to drift and to try to make the problem something that you are interested in as well so with that I'll close and we can have a conversation. Yeah. Jeannie, thank you that was truly inspiring and I don't know about the rest of the audience but I have this odd urge to go rowing we just, we need the same beautiful boat house in New York City that was really stunning David, thank you for joining us, hello. David is the executive director of the Van Allen Institute in New York City and he's an urban thinker and activator he was previously associate curator of architecture and urban studies and curator of the BMW Guggenheim Lab at the Guggenheim Museum a project that I hope you all enjoyed because it was really a game changer for New York City and he was also the co-curator for the American Pavilion of the Venice architecture Biennale in 2012. So over to our conversation. I'd love to start with the Aqua Tower. I'm not sure that you're all aware that the Aqua Tower is actually the tallest skyscraper built and designed and built by a woman and I would like to open with that because bravo. So the Aqua Tower and City Hyde Park are both emphasizing community and other than the balconies how else were you trying to encourage that and now how are you seeing people joining together and being social? Yeah, it's so interesting because when we began the project there was a lot of rules in place sometimes developers have where you have to have separate entries for different people who are using the building and things like that and for Aqua we realized that if we combined the amenities we would have much better just killer amenities like big swimming pools and basketball courts and all kinds of things but it depended on making those shared. So I think it really broke some new ground in that particular market anyway of sharing amenities which became a very social place for the different owners because the building actually has a hotel, rental apartments and condominium units in it. So kind of very three different types of people that would be using the building but it's really worked out pretty well. Actually like a lot of people are getting together on this building they're like meeting each other and I was impressed by that only seeing that after the building's been up for a number of years and watching how it's worked out it became a very social extrovert building. Last time I was in Chicago I actually made a pilgrimage for the building and I could see it but little did I know that it was about four miles away it was a very nice walk and once I got there I was really impressed with the social feeling and the ambiance within the building so you've really succeeded in making it a very social place. I wonder in Chicago where all of these iconic architectural stars have lived and created what was the response of the Chicago community when you first proposed the building? Well it was interesting that luckily timing-wise it just made it under the wire before the economic downturn. And so really when we were proposing the building it almost went unseen because there were so many buildings being proposed and it just kind of came in under the radar and one of the main things that we tried to do was get the city to allow us to do a taller building a taller skinnier building with the same area and they agreed after we presented it that it was a much taller building than what was in the first plan so anyway it was no one really knew about it until it was there. Wow, lucky you. How is it to build so much in your own city? I think it's one of the amazing things that you're able to build so much and I don't think any architect who in their own hometown can do so much. I'm really glad about that because it's nice to have, it's been great for our, we're very collaborative and our staff is really getting to experience construction in real time and when you're working on projects that are all over the world, sometimes it gets handed off and things like that. So I think it's built up a really strong base of knowledge there. But how, I don't know, I mean I think it was really because we're doing a lot of different types of projects, things from small community centers to tall buildings and the tall buildings don't come around that often. I mean it takes years and the economy has to be right but the things that we're doing for community are ongoing and they're just, they're not big budgets or anything but they are equally important as, I think as infrastructure elements in a city. Is it very important that you're in many of the meetings because I can imagine it like, okay, yeah, she's coming and great. We, instead of like constantly being on the road. Yeah, no, I am constantly on the road but it's like a pleasure, it's a guilty pleasure to go on site and be in and go in and show up in the trailer and things like that. And I don't know, it doesn't seem abnormal when I go to the meetings or go to, you know, but yeah. So, but it's really, it depends on really having a very, a life that's very prescribed, threading the needle to get where you need to be. I heard your talk at the Chicago Humanities Festival and you made a nice reference to a future built with bits and sticks and I'd love you to talk a little bit about that and we're especially interested in tools like Cooper Hewitt and I wondered, can you talk about some of the new tools that you're using for your projects? Yeah, sure, I think, I mean, this whole age has been about what to do with information, you know, and people have done different things with the tools. So, you know, everyone's can figure out so much more with digital tools and creating different versions, versions and forms. But I think mainly what we've done with the tools, the biggest thing has been to use the information as data and so finding out one thing that we have been doing over the last five years is working with companies to when we're working for visitor-serving organizations like the Cooper Hewitt, for example, we've done a lot of big data analysis on different design ideas in real time. So, to see before you spend all this money on building a new museum, you can tell if the ideas are gonna be successful with the mass market. So, that's one really, I think, not everyday use of information as well, we're very, I like the analog tools as well as the digital tools and it's the combination of all of those things that in the end, it's not about the tool, but you have to know which tool to pick up depending on where the design is going. Let's see, I came a little bit late, I should first apologize for that. Oh, no worries. I can happily report that all of the museum is under construction. But all good. I thought it was interesting because I saw the second half of the presentation and you speak about parameters around islands, then you speak about cities without walls and breaking down boundaries. And I thought, oh, wow, that's so poetic, all of it. But it's all about basically edges and the systems that we create around these edges and basically the wall or the boundary. And what could we learn from that if we look at a larger city like Chicago or New York, for that matter? What would you like to break down in each of those cases? I'm really interested in the breaking down of the systems between wild systems and urban people systems. I mean, with some of the testing we've been doing in Chicago, and I think you've been interested in it too with those wild places, the getaway places, how do you weave those into an urban setting and how close can you make that contact so that you do have that reprieve from the intensity of the urban condition? In a way, it's making it more dense just with other species as well. So I think it's equally as important to do tall buildings as to do some of these urban infrastructure projects that are doubling as natural escapes. What is an escape for you? Yeah, I knew you were gonna ask. I'm doing research simultaneously. Yes, yes, yes. I think it's like a mental escape and that means surrounding yourself with something different than what you're used to. So if you're working all day in an office, it's great too. One of the things I do is go out really early in the morning once a month on the lakefront and do bird watching. Yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert or anything, but I go with the Audubon group and that's an amazing escape because people know everything about these birds and I'm really the novice and I just, you know, it's great to do something like that. She's stardust, I like that. It's really great. You're a wannabe ornithologist, I think. You talk about birds a lot. I do. They're so interesting because they're everywhere but we don't really, you don't notice them until you notice them and then you see them, you see how much variety there. I think anything that has a lot of variety is really interesting to me. We have a lot of students in the audience and I know they would love to hear about how you got to where you are today. So if you could talk a little bit about your background, that would be great. Okay, yeah, I mean, I had a pretty, maybe typical architecture education but I think I started out really looking at either maybe engineering and then I found architecture and totally fell in love with it. I traveled to Europe for one year in my undergrad and then just seeing how close the architecture is tied to culture and how it really defines what you think about a culture that really made me excited about studying it further. And so I went on to study urbanism and had a Rotary Fellowship and I decided to go to like a central place in Europe, Switzerland and at the Eiteha and I spent time there and then went on to the GSD to study for my masters. But I think one of the most important things as a student that I did was really have a true thesis project and I know thesis programs go in and out of favor at various institutions but for me what it did was really allowed me to define some of the questions that I continue and that I continue to work on now as opposed to project after project, I really started to zoom in on what I thought was interesting, a continuous problem. And it had to do with how we define nature and how culture and nature are co-mingled and so that continues to be kind of a basis for me to look at problems in interesting ways. So after I finished, I just went on to work for someone that I really respected. I think that was important because we all, as architects have to do an internship and work for someone. And so going to a place where you really want to be and learn something is important. I went to Rotterdam and worked with Rem I mean there were probably three on my list and I just got the first job there so I stayed there. What's wordy out of two? What? What's wordy out of two? Oh well, I'm not gonna, I mean it's somewhat random I guess, your experience about how you end up what you do but what I got out of that was really just an amazing experience working on luckily a couple projects that were actually built which I understand that it's sometimes you can get put on a project and it might be competition and you might get stuck on that competition, competition, competition but I luckily got to satisfy my urge to build and then I got the bug for that and just wanted to continue doing that. So yeah. You say, you talk about the definition of nature and how this was already at the beginning part of your career while you were studying and then if you look back at that point what is the difference in the definition because it must have changed like for you but also for all of us over those years. I'm curious how you looked at it then and now. Yeah, it's interesting for my thesis I really was looking at water and I was my thesis was like a park that cleaned river water so it was through aeration in various ways so it wasn't that different than the way that I look at it now, you clean the water and it was used for uses like urban uses and then put back into the river so it was basically an aeration station so it wasn't that different but I think you have the blurring of the identity of what's natural and what is designed I think is really interesting still because we were currently designing like a 90 acre piece of land that it was a former airport and the pressure was, we met with so many groups to understand how they would want to use it and we wanted to have these different kind of ecosystems there that could be visitable so very open to people but we're using a geometry that was somewhat more obviously designed like straight lines and hexagonal shapes for the purpose of zoning out this site and one of the critiques because we had to be critiqued by a series a council of landscape architects and architects was to make it look more natural than a way but the thing is it will have all the components that will make it a successful habitat but it doesn't necessarily have to be replicating swoopy lines and curves so that was an interesting rubbing up against that difficult point of when you are actually designing nature for a city, how will it look? Remind me what the public components are in the park because there is a visitor center I think and yeah there would be, well it was this former airport and then now it's actually adjacent to a museum campus that has the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum and also, what else is there? Well we were basically trying to do outdoor versions of the museums and put like for the field they have a lot of collections of taxidermy birds and things so making a spot that you could actually see migrating birds land there with walkways and things like that and then there's a visitor center there's a kind of a reef that people can explore and the reef creates a new lagoon where they can do fish spawning and kind of supplementing what the Shedd has inside and then the last thing is this big music concert hall outdoor that has installations on it that are related to the stars so it kind of relates to the Adler Planetarium which is also there so it's just like taking these ingredients and trying to make them external. And as we first back to the sense of mysticism that you were talking to with space and under the ocean. Yes indeed, yeah it has both in that case. Nice. Speaking of the ocean and waterways you're a real river fanatic and water fanatic dedicated to the waterways. Can you talk a little bit about your process? For example with the Aquarium Project how do you gather your team and talk about the problem at hand and the challenge and then attack it? Yeah this one is really interesting because I think it's starting to, the Aquarium chose us to help them think strategically about their project and it's not necessarily the building which so it's really interesting so I see the whole project as a research piece that will then inform us for years to come on various projects but really involving our office and going literally going to meetings with big teams. We've done a kind of a science fair with the National Aquarium staff, they have 400 staff to kind of expose the process to them as well of the research so they can understand where the project, what we're learning and they can be influencing it. It's really I think that type of project and the landscape projects are very important to have a strong community exchange whoever that community might be. So the process is one of doing a lot of work in our own space sharing the work and going back it's a kind of iterative process that will hopefully result in this plan at probably sometime this summer we'll be publishing our plan on how they will attack those different issues. And what's the schedule on that project? Well I think in principle. Yeah in principle it's a little bit like the rebuild by design project in that there are and we're both jurors on that interesting project in that there are solutions at different scales and they will be able to choose the hierarchy and the timing of when they implement some of these things. But things like the Dahlsen question are pretty urgent in a certain way. And so yeah we will work with them to help them kind of prioritize what they do first. Your question about timing is actually really interesting. I've been struggling with this thing with community work in the design process which I think is very important but yeah for almost every project your community is also changing over time. So you're speaking to a group of people that may not live there in 10, 15, 20 years. So how do you incorporate that in your process? That's a really good point because oftentimes when you work with like in a charrette format or something people that have the loudest voices are the ones that get heard. And so it's really important to kind of try to find out who the constituents really are even if they're not represented somehow. So it is a big challenge, you're right. It really is. Most of the time the loudest constituents are the ones that are worried about parking spaces. That's true. So I know something about Jeannie that I want to share with you and that is she has a very unique collection and that is a collection of dirt which really underscores her love for exploring different materials. And I find it really interesting that you bridge these scales from materials to full-fledged cities. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you find so fulfilling about that scale of A to C? Well, I think it's, I do think that architecture can be specific about a place but you can pick, it doesn't mean that you're replicating other architecture that was built there before but trying to find something that is essential that you can relate to and earth and dirt, it are like the absence of a place and they are all different colors and all different, so I don't know, I'm a very terrestrial and material-driven person, I think, and I like to play with that scale. We have a big shop also in our office where we make things even though it's possible to do so much digitally and we do, I just don't feel like giving up that playground aspect and I want to keep that going. So most of the people that work together with me are similar and we like to make things and so I think when you do designs for installations in museums or recently we designed some objects for a dance company to use in one of their productions, you really get to have that fulfillment of making something that's full scale. Wonderful, she keeps them in little six ounce transparent cubes in her house which really made me laugh. Good storage technique. Yeah, I mean Dirt is like also a free souvenir, you know. Unless you get questioned by TSA. Right, what are you doing? It's actually quite special to go to your office. I have been doing many studio visits over the past 10 years basically and it's always interesting that as soon as you walk into an office you basically get a sense of how the office works just by the layout of the office and the atmosphere that's in the office and you have a very, well you're a very friendly personality to begin with but you also feel that in the office it feels like a pleasant place to be in and I wonder if you have a trick to get that office atmosphere going to the right. That's a good question because recently we've been growing and that culture that you talk about is so important to our process and the openness that needs to be there so no one's hiding or trying to control information and things like that that can happen in organizations. So one thing that we do is we eat together and we recreate together I guess and one kind of more organized aspect of that is our summer camp. I said it was a real camp that you were talking about. There's a real camp, yeah. So we go to camp every year. Not that, that was a different camp. But we go to our own camp and do a camping, like there's a camp that we go to that has a lake and different lodgings or you can pitch a tent and we do various activities. It's just a fun way to get to know people. It's more personal on the more personal side. The reason why I'm asking this is actually I was looking at one of your last slides and there's a few people sitting at the table I think and there's some text over it that is referring to one of the words is emotion. And I've been thinking about this quite a bit and I wonder if we need to have a bigger role for emotion and for instance how we think about cities and how we talk about cities, how we design cities or buildings for that matter because we're so, we have been quite focused on for instance data or mapping and all of the things that you can very easily research. So that's why it's all and it may also be interesting to tie that back to the community outreach piece and the conversations with the communities. Perhaps you can say something about it. I think that's a really great idea because we are designing places for people, people to use and like with the reverse effect it was really illuminating was interviewing the users of the river I know from, for so many different, incredibly different reasons, different economic structures, different purposes and but they all used it and loved it in their own way which was so interesting, I thought. And that helped us to, it just helped think about it and took it out of the map world for a minute to think about why people would use it. With the dolphin issue and this marine mammal rescue piece that we're working on with my students at Rice we interviewed people that were involved in marine mammal rescue teams. Most of them are volunteers and they get a call and there's like a manatee wound up in a piece of plastic or something and they call up and they mobilize and they get together to do the rescue and suddenly we were talking about it and we realized that how emotional it must be to lose an animal after you did all that. It's great if it survives and it's a great story but that aspect of just putting all the effort into it and lost and so that started to inform some of the students thinking about designing the space for the people, the volunteers, what would they do after they lost an animal. Cool. So I can see eager audience members but one last question for the architecture students out there I think they may appreciate when are you stumped because in the New Yorker article about you from a couple of years ago you said the longer I delay on coming up with the form, the better but what if you're delaying and delaying what do you do when you're stumped? Where do you find your inspiration? Yes, you can't delay forever. It's like a deadline but delaying long enough to I think it's the opposite of school because in school you're encouraged to delay it somehow. I don't know, you feel like you can do it but when you have a meeting and you gotta show something maybe it's similar to pin up, you gotta do something. So the time to turn off the research and just go make things and that's really what the way that I do it is just go in the model shop and you do have to be able to turn that piece off because there's, I don't know, for people who like to read you can just keep digging and digging and digging endlessly so there's a moment where all of that has to be turned off and just from my technique it's just like to go make, physically make something. So you start making rather than taking the pencil out or going to the computer, you start making. Yeah, just go in the shop and start using the wire cutter or doing something like that. Or, yeah. And then I like also very much the thing that's different than school is working together with others at the same time, trying things out that are not necessarily successful but you can talk about what you're seeing and it's not a solitary activity for me. It's more, I like thinking out loud. Thinking about the project out loud with others and then you get the range of solutions and you kind of, you can see what's gonna work and what's not gonna work. How large is your team? Well, we're about like 54 now but each particular team on a project would only be, you know, from maybe like from three to 10, 12. Right. Mm-hmm. So yeah, it's, the bigger it gets the more there is to keep up with. That's for sure. Yes, I see. Changing course. Thank you. Tell us about the impact of the MacArthur on your life and your practice and your thinking. Okay, good question. Yeah, I was totally shocked that I received that call and I have to tell you, I heard my assistant told me that it's the MacArthur Foundation on the phone and they have a headquarters nearby and I thought, oh, they probably want us to redo their headquarters. Like, and then, you know, so it was really, it was super shock but amazing and what I guess for me it just, it validated for myself like what we're doing, which direction we're going and able to do it with more confidence and not have to worry what other people are thinking about my practice because it is, I feel like we're doing some things that are very similar to the group of architects but we are doing some things that are slightly different and it just made it okay to do that. It was affirmation. Yes, affirmation, it's good work. Oh, what did you do for my life? Well, maybe busier but let's see. I think not that much has changed personally. I was able to take on a few projects that would not be bringing in money for the firm just because of that base there but yeah, I think I just pretty much live the same lifestyle only just slightly amped up more accelerated. Thanks. Questions? Don't be shy. Yes. You seem to use a lot of metaphor in your, the shape of the road house formed by the emotion of the person that I look at, the ox in the Civic Justice Senate performed by different scale arms of contact. I was wondering if that's a conscious part of your design process whereby you look for these metaphors or if it's something that just kind of happens naturally. That's a good question. I think metaphor is a great way to communicate with people. I know like sometimes it's necessary to invoke it just to make someone understand what you're trying to do and it maybe it wasn't really like, for example, if I explain the Aqua Tower to people it really didn't come from replicating anything or trying to be like water. In fact, we didn't really even name the building that was, if anything, it was more about strata than water at all but sometimes it helps to say what things are like to help people get a better understanding and I think you can probably tell I really like to communicate design to public. I think it's so important and it helps advance the entire design conversation because the more public that is excited about design and sees design, well, you know this, I mean, it's better for all of us. It's the only way forward really. So I will use whatever it takes to make it understood. So for the Arcus example you mentioned that was more of, again, it was more of something that the school could rally around. They knew that they were working at these different scales so we used our building to help them describe that to others, you know? So yeah, it's kind of, there's different ways to use it. We probably make use of all the different ways. That's a good question though. When you speak about language, it's quite funny, I was thinking, hmm, this is so nice that we have a conversation about architecture and we have not heard the word agency once. Which is a problem when you go to the schools because it's very often overused without, yeah. There are always buzzwords that will live for a certain number of years and then go away but try to consciously not use them but even though they're good like that one which is a great word to use. But as much as possible, it's trying to make something understandable for all of us. Not that you're dumbing down what you're saying but just communicating in language. I mean, one thing we do too internally is we have writers working in staff because I think a lot of times we architects are not the best writers after we come out of grad school just thinking about architecture and listening to these critiques. So I think it's a super important part of what we do. Hi, so I work for a real estate development firm that builds tall buildings. So when I'm looking at the Aqua Tower, I guess one of the biggest questions I have for you is what sort of maybe were some of the biggest negotiations that were at that development table? You know, I'm with all of the undulating facades and the different locations of the windows, it seems like repetitious floor plates would be quite a challenge. And I know for developers today anyway, that's important. I don't know if this was one of the pre, one of the boom buildings that maybe were less. No, it was serious constraints. I think it's one of the most constrained building types there is and as you know, if you're a developer, there's different things. One of the biggest constraints is time. So with all the loans and all the finance, I think there were 15 different banks and lenders for this project. And so these loans are, you know, you wanna build as fast as possible. And so we were constrained by, with the different shapes of the floor plans, we couldn't add time to the project. So it really forced us to be creative about how it would be built and work together with the builder and the developer from the very beginning, you know, having the builder in the room. And I know, because if you think about it, if you just add, you have an 82 story tower, if you add four hours to each floor, because the floors were done in three day pours, just adding like four hours on for layout or something can add months and months onto the schedule. So time is one of the biggest constraints and the negotiations were, you know, the way our developer Magellan worked was really getting multiple viewpoints in the room from the builder to someone who represents the potential buyer, someone who represents the ownership and all of those voices would be brought in at once. So it did, you know, I think on the base, we probably went through, you know, 12 different designs on the very base because they couldn't change any longer the tower because they're already in the sales part. So it really, everything was happening down at the base to try to make it, you know, come in. So lots of things, yeah. Did the 82 floors come from the developer as the request or did you come up with that? Well, yeah, the original plan had a shorter squatter tower there and here's another interesting thing about towers. You really don't decide how tall they are. I mean, they're constantly changing until the very last minute. And also the tower is like a spreadsheet, you know, with different sections in the Excel spreadsheet that represent, you know, how many floors have a nine foot six ceiling, how many floors have 10 feet and so on. And it's just constantly adjusting until it's built, you know, it's really, or even like the number of rental apartments versus condos. There were more people that wanted to buy so we had to like shift that line down and yeah. It's the most, it's shocking really because they're the biggest buildings and they are being designed to the last minute. Really just with flux built in. So you really don't ever, I don't think you decide how tall a building is unless you're going for the super tall and you're trying to break a record or something like that. You have to be just flexible and ready for it to be adjusted to market. With that Chicago wind also. Yes, exactly. You did a nice book with, which was related to the exhibition that you did in Chicago. So the book was with Zoe Ryan and there's this whole section in the book with endless, endless towers. Was this before the aqua tower or was this leading up to this? No, for versions of aqua or after. I think there were little models of, I think there were different towers. Yes, yes, I showed that tonight. Oh, I didn't see that yet. But no, all of them kind of go back to the ancestor of aqua. And they, so different, we kind of put it into different, there's only certain ideas you can work on with towers and one of them was, we called exospatial. So buildings that use the exterior to be a spatial element. Different solar carving is another one. So they really came out of that first initial idea but we've been exploring them in different ways. That was what you were working on for here, I think. Yes, it was. Did you show that to her? I didn't show it. Can we talk about it? Well, it's still gotta be, it's got one more, so hopefully only one more city review meeting. So it's not been approved yet. And one of the things that's difficult with it is that it's arguing for breaking the zoning setback. And so for a good reason, in order to preserve light for the High Line. But it's been a struggle. So I can tell you that. If you wanna break the zoning envelope, it is a struggle, you do have to prove it. You really have to prove it. So we're still in the proving it out phase and fingers crossed it goes forward. I think many New Yorkers would be very excited to see this. Yeah, it's not dead yet. This was mentioned sort of to the side during the talking about the Aqua Tower but wasn't really discussed. How does being a high profile woman in architecture affect your work or does it affect your work? Oh, okay. I don't think it affects the work. I mean, the, well, maybe, no, I honestly, I don't know, it's hard to say. It's just the work is the work and it's guided by me, but it's a collaborative process with a lot of people involved. I think the place where I feel the most odd is when I'm in the tall building situation because a lot of the conferences, like I'm actually chairing the jury for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. You know that group, CTBUH, with the great acronym. But when I'm on those kinds of things, I do kind of sense like, oh, I'm the only one here. So it is kind of a rarefied world that does the tall buildings. I think it'll hopefully change. So you talk about these teams that you like to collaborate with the community, with the contractors, you bring them in early. The question becomes with all of this consensus building and you even do all of this research. So you have all of these different things coming together. Where does, and earlier you mentioned something about will or imposing your will and that you didn't really impose your will, but you have some dynamic kind of projects. Where does your will fit in? More importantly, where's the conflict resolution? How do you personally manage conflict resolution? What's your field? I don't know, I'll say, I want to say. I want to talk about it, by the way. Okay, I like that. No, of course there's will and there's ego. Also, I would never deny that, but it's like the way that you get there. By looking at a lot of solutions, just on the process side internally, it makes it possible to see what's working and what isn't, so you, I get to decide, I guess you could say in that sense. But before even starting that, there's no harm in listening to what people have to say. And in fact, in order to do that, you have to actually believe that they might have something interesting or valuable to say. And if you don't believe that, and you just think that it's a waste of time or just going through the motions, then it's a pain, but there could be a spark. Somebody could tell you something that is fascinating or could set your mind in a different direction. And so you have to have a positive attitude about it, I guess. And there are conflicts, especially with public projects and especially big public projects, like parks are like incredibly hard and landscape architects do it much better, I think than architects. But I'm trying to learn from them some techniques. Just really listening, finding ways to let people speak their mind or to register their ideas is helpful, definitely helpful. In the end, those kind of conflicts that occur, I mean, like for the Northern Ireland project, for example, we were told, the city told us that there were like three bankers boxes of plans that had been done by both individuals and different firms for that piece of land because everybody saw that land and they were like, I wanna put my museum to maritime history on there. And there were so many different desires that wanted to be mapped across this piece of land. So we really did look, we looked at all of them and then we just started doing some meetings, stakeholder meetings and inviting different people. And we did, we set up the one that, this one is really sticks in my mind because we basically formed four teams and with different members of the community on the teams with each one had a designer on the team. So the designer actually drew what they were talking about. And then we put up the four solutions and we kind of worked them up so they would all be viable and interesting because you have to be ready to go with any one of them, you know, not your favorite. And then we, you know, I guess at the end of the day, the people voted on it and then the city decided. But yeah, you have to be kind of open to having not your favorite be chosen. Actually, my favorite wasn't chosen. My favorite one was kind of using the land to spell out Chicago on us. Which would be amazing if you fly. Yeah, and then the eye, the dotting eye would be the island, you know. So, but it wasn't picked. Is it help, was that answering your question kind of? Yeah, it definitely does. Okay. Other questions? I have another one. We sat down a few weeks ago in your office and what I saw tonight was interesting because you speak a lot about the joy of building and it's really making you tick. But also when we sat down, suddenly something started to twinkle in your eyes when the word research came up. Literally that happened. And I was like, oh, this is great because you like doing research. But I also wondered like, how is the research that you do in your office? How do you try and make the difference from the research that a university could be doing? Or we had another academic institution. Oh, that is such a good question. Because I think there's amazing research going on in different institutions in architecture and urban design. The difference maybe is just like the chance to apply it. And also, we're building up our body of research and that lives within our own institution. And we've been trying to, we're trying to learn from universities how they do it but how do you keep that knowledge accessible to new people coming in? And how do you maintain your knowledge within your own office? But I think the most exciting thing is when you're able to deploy it and tie it back to like the reverse effect and bringing that into the work on the boat house and things like just being able to connect those two dots with a physical project that's built and a project that's living on paper. The continuity in the research is interesting if you think about the office because usually turn around in offices is very high. I'm not sure about in yours, I can imagine it's actually not that high because it's a pleasant place. But yeah, say that on average, an architect is there between two and four years. Oh, ours is much higher, I think. See, good. I'm sure, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, it's also, you know, you have to live through a Chicago winter. So it's like the diehard people that know how they can do it and they stay there. But now I think it's partly though, honestly, it has to do with the fact that if you're in New York, there's so many interesting places you can work. I mean, and so maybe you want to go around and try different places. And in Chicago's architecture community, though strong is smaller, much smaller. So it's just not as easy to go walk out of one door and go into another one. Plus, I think there is a bonding and there's like a feeling of kind of working on something together and producing it together that is strong there. So. Good. Like that, like that. Okay, how much do you love to build in your city? I just wonder, do you think about opening practices in other cities or worldwide? What do you think about that? Yes. Good question. I know it's definitely whether to, probably more often we will be having like beach heads and different places for different projects. And so yeah, we've thought about how to do that. And I think it would always probably need some people from the core office to be maintaining that culture in a new office. So it's definitely on our minds right now. So it probably is something that will eventually happen. Good, we'll welcome you here. Okay. 60% more space at Cooper Hewitt means that we finally have the opportunity to show off our collection of 217,000 objects. And part of that we'll be showcasing new acquisitions. So you can be sure that the Genie Gang drawings and model will be part of that. So you can see Genie's work soon at the Cooper Hewitt and we look forward to welcoming you there. So thank you very, very much. Genie, this has been a marvelous discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.