Jeanne Gang
The idea of making a wooden masonry wall intrigued us as it was a beautiful combination and an idea we had never considered. Studio Gang have built such a wall in the Arcus Center. It is always so rewarding in architecture to see and feel the big idea resonating with the tactile materiality of a building.
The large, urban, technically sophisticated work of the practice sits side by side with projects of a more modest scale which appear to be used as a laboratory of research into the inventive and imaginative use of natural materials, and the making of a direct relationship between materiality, use and context. This is evident in the timber trusses and structural wooden lattice facades of the Glencoe Writers Theatre, or the dynamic undulating roof structure of the Eleanor Boathouse in Chicago. Their work also engages with disadvantaged communities in an inventive way, creating places with unexpected adjacencies of diverse uses so as to act as a catalyst for the integration of such communities into society.
In the Arcus Center, we love the exploration of the life cycle of the wood and the belief expressed by the architects that wood has the remarkable ability to connect people and architecture across cultures and time through its ‘elemental resonance’.
YF+SMcN