The Harvard Graduate School of Design announces that Jeanne Gang (MArch ’93) has been named the Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture as of July 1, 2025. Established at the school in 1989 by the Kajima Corporation, the endowed professorship supports a faculty member to advance instruction and scholarship in architecture.
Gang is the founding partner of Studio Gang , an international architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. The firm has built a large portfolio of globally respected projects that draw insight from ecological systems to strengthen relationships among individuals, communities, and environments. Well known projects include the Aqua Tower in Chicago, IL (completed in 2010), the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, MI (completed in 2014), and Solar Carve in New York, NY (completed in 2019). Most recently, Studio Gang has received high praise for its design of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan (2023), which provides a new entrance hall and wing for this major institution. Studio Gang has also created the campus plan for Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus and designed notable buildings for the site, including the David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center.
Studio Gang has become known for advancing ecological and community-centered design practices, and these aspects of professional life form the backbone of Gang’s pedagogy at the GSD. To help students develop their agency as designers, her option studios focus on existing buildings, such as the New England Aquarium, with an emphasis on resiliency and reuse. These studios also have provided Gang with a forum for her own research on low-carbon techniques for adaptive reuse and addition, including her concept of “architectural grafting.” Gang has developed these themes further as a guest editor, with Lizabeth Cohen, of Harvard Design Magazine 53: “Reuse and Repair,” forthcoming Fall 2025.
