September 24, 2024 • 51 mins
In her latest book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang digs into how the horticultural practice of “grafting” — joining a new plant to an older one so they can grow and thrive as one — inspires a fresh paradigm for sustainable design. As the founding partner of architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang, Jeanne and her firm are known for designing the 82-story Aqua Tower on Chicago’s skyline and the St. Regis Chicago. Then, she’s joined by Lee Bey, an editorial writer and architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, for a lively and humorous chat through Chicago’s contemporary architecture problems and promises.
Watch the full conversation here.
Read the podcast transcript.
Read:
Jeanne Gang, The Art of Architectural Grafting
Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture
Daniel M. Abramson, Obsolescence: An Architectural History
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture
Explore:
American Museum of Natural History Richard Gilder Center
Live event programmed by Lauren Pacheco
Live event produced by Jesse Swanson
Live event stage managed by Kait Samuels
Live event produced and mixed by Nick Broste
Production assistance by Christopher Moore and Josh Harlow
Podcast edited and mixed by Alisa Rosenthal
Podcast story editing by Alexandra Quinn
Podcast copy assistance from Katherine Kermgard
Additional support provided by David Vish
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
JEANNE GANG (00:00):
I think we tend to think of a building as a single author, and we have to rethink that too because there are there could be multiple authors.
(00:01):
[Theme music plays]
ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:02):
Hey all what’s going on, this is Chicago Humanities Tapes, the audio extension of the live Chicago Humanities Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, and today we’re bringing you architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang.
As the founding partner of architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang, Jeanne and her firm are known for designing the 82-story Aqua Tower on Chicago’s skyline and the St. Regis Chicago.
In today’s program, you’ll hear Jeanne discuss her latest book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, where she digs into how the horticultural practice of “grafting” — joining a new plant to an older one so they can grow and thrive as one — inspires a fresh paradigm for sustainable design. Then, you’ll hear her joined by Lee Bey, an editorial writer and architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, as they chat through Chicago’s contemporary architecture problems and promises.
For more information on our speakers, head to the show notes, or check out chicagohumanities.org, where you’ll also find ticket information on our upcoming live Fall 2024 events. Tickets are on sale now for Connie Chung, Richard Powers, Joan Baez, and so much more.
This is Jeanne Gang and Lee Bey at the stunning and cavernous First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple in Spring 2024.
[Theme music plays]
[Audience applause]
JEANNE GANG (00:09):
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, I’m happy to be here tonight and, excited to talk with Lee in a bit. So. What I wanted to do is just to, start with presenting a little bit about, the way that this book came about. So by going through a couple of old projects and ideas that that led to the introductions project. So I'm happy to be here tonight with my team. So hello, Studio. I know a lot of people here. And what what I wanted to talk about, it really is this lifelong observation of nature. And I've always really been inspired by nature and its solutions. Its beauty. And also there's this kind of resilience. And, one of the things that we've done in Chicago is start this experimental rooftop in our headquarters in Wicker Park. And it's really about creating as much biodiversity as possible in the middle of the city. So when I founded the studio on this idea of, of this kind of medium of architecture that could be used to help people and the planet, it was an approach that originally, was about recycling. And so when we first started our first projects, a lot of it was about like using materials that were already available. So starting with what's there. What's really exciting about Chicago is this kind of overlay that you get between natural systems and industrial materials, and the south side where migratory birds are, are, flying over these, post industrial lands. And so, under this kind of rubric, we designed buildings that could be used, made, made like a nest, like a bird's nest, using materials that are already there or nearby. Lowering the energy use. So what I get really excited about is, is designing a building that would be used only by acquiring these materials that are nearby. And so this first building that we did, although it was never built, was cited in the Calumet area, which has all these fertile ecosystems, but all these industrial remnants. And so, this project was really it kind of became this touchstone for us, even though it wasn't built. And it also had to do with how to protect migratory birds from crashing into window glass, that they cannot see. So that became an obsession. And, there's really with this building project, there was really this reciprocity between, the building and the place, which I really liked. And so we continue to try to work on that. Another angle for making architecture good for the planet and for people is really about creating higher density in cities. The footprint of just like the amount of households that live in the Aqua Tower, for example, in this compact footprint, the households produce much less carbon emissions per, per household than you would in the spread out other arrangement that you get as you as you spread out and sprawl out in the cities. So that we've have focused a bit on, tall buildings and of course, with the Aqua Tower, it was really informed by these kind of layers, that are almost like the natural rock formations that you get around the lake. But it's really designed to make the city feel amazing when you live there and to connect to people, and they can connect to each other and the city environment. Okay. One other way you can use, buildings and architecture to improve the environment is by using bio based materials. And that means materials that have low embodied carbon, so much less carbon than they than steel, let's say, are concrete. So it's also really fun to work with wood because it's so alive as a material to use. So this social justice center where we used it's a small campus, at Kalamazoo, where we used cordwood masonry, which is like using logs instead of bricks. With beautiful results. I think really looks like, a fabric. And then it's also embodying this kind of social justice ethos for the building. Building with wood can scale up too, because now we have many new materials that are allowing us to just substitute out wood slabs, let's say, for steel slabs. For the campus at UC Santa Cruz, we used a lot of those materials called mass timber, for the construction. And we were building within this kind of redwood forest, which is really amazing setting, to build a building and you get these incredible finishes that are also, make people feel good because it's a natural material. So this really brings me to, the reason why I wanted to start talking about renovation and reuse, because it's kind of obvious that to to be good for the environment and use less energy, it it really makes sense to use buildings that are already there. But sometimes those buildings don't meet the needs, like buildings that are already there might not meet the needs of what the, the city needs, and they might not be big enough or they might not be fit out for that. So I started to think about another way for that. And it brings me to this project, which is the Prentice Hospital, which some of you might know. Prentice Women's Hospital, which was by Birgit Goldberg. It was kind of an obvious way to to reuse this building and, to save, I think reuse, save something like 50 to 75% of the carbon emissions. But in this case, the owner, which was Northwestern University, really needed a bigger building. And they, it was enough to dissuade them from reusing this building, even though it was a significant architectural landmark. And so what happened was if if you don't remember, we had, a big fight to try to save it, but, the alderman ultimately said that he didn't want to tear down the building, but he was remaining open to suggestions and he said, believe me, if there's a eureka moment, I'm all ears. And, but, you know, I guess the eureka moment never came. And, and what happened was, that building was torn down. But but this is exactly when I started to think about grafting, actually, because I looked at this plan and saw that the middle section in this model, you can see it was open. It doesn't have cores in it, like what you typically get in the middle of a high rise. So, there was an idea there that we could put a core to hold a bigger building, down the middle of this building. So I proposed at the time to save Prentice, but to do so through this kind of third way to add capacity to the building, but keep the root stock and we'll get into that, what that is. But these things are not mutually exclusive. So it would be a new building growing out of the old one. So, what was interesting to me about that was that Michael Kimmelman, who was the critic, is also still the critic for The New York Times, decided to write about this idea. And it was interesting because the title of the article, kind of foreshadows this approach to grafting. It's a vision enabling a clover to bloom. Okay, so that's kind of the idea to hold that in mind. So carbon reduction and adaptive reuse in general, they're often treated as this kind of technical exercise. And, and not really an impetus for design creativity. And what we need, I think, are new metaphors and new taxonomies that can help expand this creativity of reusing things. So maybe grafting could provide this new model. And we but it's like we need this more precise language. And that's why, I started working on this book.
[Music]
So what is grafting? Horticultural grafting. It's really this uniquely vivid term that refers to this agricultural technique of connecting two separate living plants, one old and one new, so that they can grow and function as one. And it's really motivated by that, both the human needs and desires. But it's like this ancient practice and it's been going on for a very long time, and it's still performed today. And in fact, every every fruit that you eat is is a product of grafting. And it's about making the fruit more delicious and more new plant varieties. And so it has this really kind of relevant, relationship with architecture because that's what we need to do right now. I've been using this idea with my students at Harvard, actually doing some horticultural grafting and and trying to learn the things that that can be relevant, like care and precision and, compatibility and those kinds of things. When I was researching the book, I went into a lot of the old libraries and found these beautiful drawings that are representative of the fact that it's an art and a technique at the same time. And today it's kind of interesting because with plants that are so resilient, they have this regenerative capacity. And then there's the place where you graft is actually a wound, and it's a healing action in response to this wound. So there's some really interesting things that we could dive into more. And there are art practices like these, the guerrilla grafters that are, they go around and graft, new fruit branches onto living street trees because the street trees are, actually sterile. And what they're trying to do is call attention to, like, food insecurity and things like that. So there's many different types of grafting. So to me, they started to suggest ways of adding on to building structures. And so that that's where we started getting into, the book and this kind of design philosophy that would be about it's about like upcycling the building, in other words, getting more use out of the existing buildings and building capacity on, on those buildings. And it's just a way of creating a new, distinctive, flourishing work of architecture. So in the book, there are some, like rules, not rules, but it's really like some things I've observed about how they can work together. So I just want to go over a couple projects that that show what I mean. We recently finished the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, which was a conglomeration of many, many different additions over time in in little Rock. I think eight different additions, eight different structural systems, eight different mechanical systems. And it was really messed up. So, but the original building was this 1937, deco building, which was really but it was actually buried deep inside all of the additions. And so what we did there was kind of scrape out this new organizational axis and reveal the old building once again. So, so it's kind of pruning it back and then adding something new to let it flourish. And you can see here some of the early models and like I said, this was completed less than a year ago. And, it's it's really been a boost to allow the museum to live on. It's like giving it a new lease on life. As well as the Gilder Center American Museum of Natural History. We had some kind of almost similar situation with, I don't know if you've ever been there, but it it's like "Night at the Museum" was filmed you know about this place. But it had a lot of dead ends, and visitors were confused where to go. And they kind of just built in all of their, their courtyards and filled them up. So our addition, is meant to, kind of give it new life by connecting it and letting the the people flow through. This is kind of. It's grafted into the center of the building in order to get closest to these flows. And we created something like 30 new connections for people to move through the space. And then it's, it's but it's something new, but it is in dialog with what's already there. And I can explain that by showing you that the green, that that strange form in the center is really a a structure almost like a natural structure that holds the new floors. And then you can see how they line up with the other floors that are not green on either side and really bring people together in, in that central space. So this this building is all about it has many classrooms and it's really about, you know, connecting people to nature in new ways. And it reminded us of this flow that you get in natural landscapes and connectivity. And if you picture if you got really small, this could be like, you know, the of course, like water coursing through a plant as well. You have this desire for movement. And so for, so for people they can connect through and, and not have any dead ends. And bringing in natural light and all of this had to sit on existing foundations. It's a, it's a structure made out of shot create that is had uses no formwork and it rests on existing foundation. So here in the library there’s a column that goes all the way down to the base. So in terms of grafting, I think it's interesting to look at the facades. On the upper register is on the Central Park West facade, with a neoclassical entry, and the new facade, which it is in dialog with that older facade. It's not replicating it, but there is some kind of, reciprocity between the old and the new, which I think is what helps make it work. So it's pretty, but it's also the same material as the Central Park West facade. So there's there's connection, there's dialog. But something new to help the building survive. Okay, now, this little project, it doesn't always have to be a big landmark to to think about reuse. And this little lab that we were asked to design, on a campus in New York. With this, I'll just say it's an ugly building, but, it was a dorm, evidently. But they really didn't. No one wanted to live there. So, we, we were asked to turn it into a lab. Well, first they said, tear down the building and build a lab. And we said, why not try to reuse what we can and build the capacity here? So to do that, you really have to get into what's already there all the materials, all the foundations, all the structure, and then to build this up, to get more daylight and to get space for the mechanical systems we used a wood construction. This was the existing, then you kind of splice onto the school, columns, you add girders, and we're creating a new higher ceiling and a new, image for the building as well, at the same time. So wood is very good for grafting on architecture because it's lightweight. We didn't have to add any foundations or these other components, just work with what is already there, and the new is clearly legible from the old. And then the, the image of the building is renewed. So almost like a kind of new building, but just using what was already there. Okay. So finally, I just want to talk about, this book also has a section on forests. And the reason why is because we found out that, you know, as we use all these new wood materials that sometimes they are being shipped from far, far away. So it kind of takes out the whole idea about being sustainable and reducing carbon. When you have to ship the material of the wood from far away. So we need wood for grafting. And that's when we started thinking about forests and where the wood comes from. So in the US, the forests are really located in the southeast and the northwest. But there’s all that blank area in between right around Chicago. A lot of people don't remember, but Chicago was this major timber place in the United States. It was the kind of clearing house for wood. And you can see the piles and piles of timber there on the left in the late 1800s. And then, of course, we know we have all these, you know, loft buildings that we love, and they're all timber structures. It's just hard now because after the fire, the the city doesn't, you know, really like, want us to build wood anymore. So we have to change the, change the regulations. But like I said, with these new products, I think we can really start to integrate timber into our buildings once again. So what fascinated me with, like, this realization is just that, I love this region. And, you know, in the 20% of all freshwater is like from the Great Lakes. And then we have, like, all these polluted sites that are unusable from, Calumet and all around. So it's really. This kind of rust belt that that that is unused lands, underutilized lands. So the book kind of also looks at redesigning the forest. Forests are very, they're all different and they are a living system. And so I think instead of thinking of forests as plantations just to get wood, we could get multiple uses out of them and even jobs and even, you know, revitalization of Chicago. So I start to, look at, you know, what the polluted areas are, the brownfields, for example. And, and we do have this one CLT plant, there on the left, which is a, mass timber production, but they make mats for trucks to drive on. So we want to shift and start producing building materials. And I think we can start to imagine what the city could look like with starting with a few pilots, designing forests that have benefits, multiple benefits. And in the next decade, start growing this green timber, industry, where there would be new jobs and, kind of create a resilient ecosystem. So I just want to end with this image. This is like a classic image from, architecture school. If you are architects, you will remember this image. But as the Essays on Architecture, it it's always thought of as like kind of the beginning of modernity, and modern thinking with, Laugier's image, where. He was actually saying that the there is, an essence to architecture. And so but what happened was, it modernity and industrialization, we kind of went away from this idea. Laugier himself went and re-imagined this idea in a more, technical way. And so, we after 250 years, we've been thinking that we're separate from nature. And so we never thought of, you know, how architecture and animals and every all of us, our kin and plants as well. And so now we're at this pivotal moment where we have to rethink our relationship with nature and no longer, think of it as, separate. And so if you look closely at this image, what I found was amazing is it actually looks like architectural grafting. That's it. Thank you very much.
[Music]
LEE BEY (00:13):
Another hand for Jeanne. Amazing. You know, I, I think I ripped up my, my Q and A at least 5 or 6 times because your your talk is so thorough. You know where to begin. You know, I was struck by Alderman Riley's quote, when it came to the fate of Prentice Hospital. I mean, there's always an excuse, right, to, to demolish buildings. And it reminded me, it reminded me of a quote, from 1971, Chicago alderman who says, he's talking about a certain building, and I'll tell you what it is in a second. He says, "It's not really a question of whether the building was worthy of landmark designation. It was a matter of weighing the aesthetic value of the building with the money involved, to buy and maintain it. It would be true of any landmark in the city." The building this all of us talking about is the Louis Sullivan Stock Exchange building. And within three months it was gone. So we were in a way we're fighting the same battle, but you you showing us a different way. Talk about that.
JEANNE GANG (00:14):
Well, I agree with you that there's always an excuse. And it it leads to it's really about it's very pragmatic costs and hassles and things like that about, reusing something. But sometimes, you know, if, if you're in the middle of a city, like with Prentice, you can kind of understand it's like under scaled, let's say, for how the city has grown up. And so that's what really led me to thinking of, like, what if we could still expand? I think of Rome and there's yeah, there's buildings built on top of buildings built on top of buildings. And we can preserve some of that history, but also still let it live by bringing new uses to it. And so, but it's a different way of thinking, because I think we tend to think of a building as a single author, and we have to rethink that, too, because there are there could be multiple authors, and it's asynchronous collaboration in a way, because you have to assess the building you're starting with. And I know I said that one building was ugly, but I actually you have to find what you love about it. And that's the only way that it works. You have to like, kind of find what you love. And then and so with with the students, we always like do a lot of drawings of the original building. And it's kind of about imagining what would that architect have done, even though you can't really imagine that. But it's a good way into thinking about grafting.
LEE BEY (00:15):
You know, this makes me think of perhaps a question on our lakefront right now, dealing with Soldier Field. Many of you probably know, that the certain professional football team, with a abysmal record, typically. I'm a Bears fans so it hurts hurts to see, but it's therapeutic to get it out in public like this. That, they want to build a stadium on the lake next to the one that you've already got. A dome stadium, which obviously is going to be larger. So in a way, two two questions in that
JEANNE GANG (00:16):
Okay. So the first part, is it an example of grafting? It, it is because it's reusing something and adding something new. It might not follow all of my rules that I have in the book, but but it does. It brought new life. Look at how long we've been able to use the stadium when I think it wasn't it the same argument before, like they were going to leave and and so they got this new - so it breathed new life into the structure and, and the city for that matter, for a number of years. And I think, I think it would be worth analyzing if it could be expanded again. I mean, it did already lose its historic building status, and nobody wants to see Soldier Field, the colonnades go away. So. But maybe there would be at at least it should be looked at, not just say "it doesn't work."
LEE BEY (00:17):
And. So then that will be in place of the domed - I'm trying to find the right word - solution.
JEANNE GANG (00:18):
Well, yes. Well, I don't know what their new solution is, but it seems like kind of. Well, it seems a bit, wasteful let's just say to, like, tear down a stadium or even leave it there and build another one right next to it, like, it just seems like a waste of, especially in this time. Reason why is that because I didn't go into this, but between we really have to save embodied carbon. There's two types of carbon emissions. There's, you know, the operational carbon, which is like the heating you use, the air conditioning you use. And if the building is good at, you know, insulating, and we've done a lot with that and we've made big gains in that. But then there's the embodied carbon. So that's the thing that we really need to drill down on now, which is all the energy that goes into making the materials that go into the building and all the shipping and all the things that those are the things that we really need to, reduce at this moment in this climate emergency that we're in. And so that's why, I mean, if energy and climate were no issue and it was, you know, then you would have the issue of the lakefront. Okay. But but if they were not an issue, then it might be a different story. But it is an issue, so it bothers me.
LEE BEY (00:19):
Me and you both. Really, it really does. You know. In some way, you're pushing against this this novel idea is rubbing up against a couple of sort of age old things. Here in Chicago, but also nationally and internationally. Which is this sense of obsolescence that a building is too old, tear it down. We heard that throughout the 60s with North, with, Prentice Northwestern. We'll hear it probably before the week is out. Next week is out with something or another. And we were talking about obsolescence and how that was kind of almost an invented term invented here in Chicago, actually. But but we'll talk about how this pushes against that in some way.
JEANNE GANG (00:20):
Yeah. Because I mean obsolescence, you can you know, what it is like when it comes to little technical devices. You know, one doesn't work anymore and you need to it - so you have to shift to the next technology. But buildings are not like that. I mean, look at the building we're sitting in right now. They last longer than iPods and all those things. So, so but what happened was they invented the kind of, it was an invented term in order to help. But the thing about obsolescence is, if you build a building right next door to this building and it has newer features, maybe all the renters and are going to want to go to that building. So what it really describes when it comes to buildings is there's a newer one next door, and that one's going to get all the people. So we need to, you know, kind of write off this building so that we can build another new one. So it's about taxes and it's it was an invented, tax, you know, taxing way, ledgers that would help to devalue the buildings so that you could then tear them down. But, you know, frankly, that was a very shocking thing to people like in the 1920s when, like, buildings that had just gone up were suddenly being torn down. So there was like this, this kind of unease about it on the public's part. So that's why obsolescence was a way to describe the reason you have to tear that down is because of this and this and this. But they're kind of it's artificial reasons. It's not. The building is not worn out and it and it you know so. So that that part is really interesting. And that's the great book by Daniel Abramson called, "Obsolescence." That is, that really does a good job of explaining that if you're interested.
LEE BEY (00:21):
You know, it really is a good book again. Obsolescence. He talks about, how the, what's now BOMA, the Building, the Building Owners and Managers Association and other groups kind of created this and, idea in that as a result. And this, you know, this gets at what you're talking about, how this kind of it's kind of calculation cynical as they may be they put buildings at risk, you know, so he had the Hulbert Roots, Hobart Roche's Tacoma Building and others. Just one, you know, one after another come down. It makes me think a bit about what you just mentioned. It makes me think a bit about LaSalle Street. Here down that downtown LaSalle Street financial corridor where, the new buildings along the river, gleaming, beautiful buildings and law firms, financial institutions, the places that made LaSalle Street LaSalle Street, or would be camping and ending up there. And what do you do with the buildings? City has a solution on the table with regard to housing. But what do you think about that and what might be added to that?
JEANNE GANG (00:22):
Well, yeah, I think those buildings could be, reused. And they should and we should be open to thinking about adding on to them to give them the features that people want in their in their workspaces today, which is, you know, maybe they are they need some floors with higher ceilings, maybe they need more amenities. But those are things that could be could be added onto these buildings in interesting ways. And then you would have this new work of architecture that would be, you know, it wouldn't be a pristine, historically renovated, building. It would be something new. But that's where we are right now. I think we we need to have new ways to think about these things.
LEE BEY (00:23):
You know, I wonder if you also fighting against the power of the blank slate, or the cleared site, you know, particularly in Chicago, the urban renewal of things. You know, there's a power, political, economic behind the idea of just raking a site clean and starting a new. Again, you're showing us a different way.
JEANNE GANG (00:24):
Yeah, that that's kind of like a good example of, like in, like urban strategies that were coming from modernism, like, you know, tabula rasa. And, and those are no longer really valid either. And we, we should like, see what's there, take stock and, and work with it, that we kind of preserve some of the history, but also, the lives of people that have lived in a place and, and kind of try to transform, starting with what's already there.
LEE BEY (00:25):
You know, I think about, Herb Greenwald and Mies, for example. You know, finding the right client. How important is that in this kind of work? Finding the right client who gets this? And I know there are many out there do you think?
JEANNE GANG (00:26):
Well, I think I just want to tell you about the contrasting example, because our office, we also work in Europe and have an office in Paris, and a lot of the architects that I know, colleagues in Paris, they they're really hamstrung by not tearing anything down. And they are feeling like, what's going to happen, the city can't grow. And so they have the opposite extreme problem. But that's what's funny about grafting, because it kind of applies to both situations. Like it's showing a way to live for the city to live by adding on to it and grafting on to it. But so I think in both markets there is not yet they're not yet ready for this. So we need to, you know, show how it can be compelling. And, and also it would help to have some policy around it, I guess. But you're right, it's not exactly like people are, they would much rather just, like start here, start with a clean slate. Makes life easier, I think.
LEE BEY (00:27):
You know, you know, one of the projects that, in the book and by the way, please get the book because it's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. You talk about a concept in Cicero. You know, working class, largely Latino suburb to the to the west and western south of Oak Park a bit. And you talk about the garden in the machine, which of course made me think of Leo Marx's "The Machine in the Garden." I'm 64, and, how how those two compare. Talk about that that Cicero idea and how it compares with Marx.
JEANNE GANG (00:28):
Yeah, that was another one that that kind of on the way up to this grafting concept because, you know, we have a lot there was a lot of foreclosure in Cicero. And there was a lot of vacancy and abandonment, and especially with the factory fabrics. So it was a way of thinking of, you know, how could you use some of those factory properties, remediate them with, trees, phyto remediation and other methods of remediation, and then use those buildings to start creating a mixed fabric of both the bungalows and the the factory buildings and kind of create a new hybrid. That would be really interesting for, you know, that that would apply to people that live there today. They could have live, work, and maker spaces in those factories, and it would just give some opportunity to a place that it's really like set up in a separated way. You know, you have your bungalows and then you have your, you know, factories and there are green spaces dedicated, but there's nothing is mixing. And so but in order to do that, we found that you'd have to like rewrite the zoning code to be because it's set up like that to separate everything. Yeah. So I think policy is, is really huge for and for making these changes. And that's what is difficult right now with the way things are, polarized. It's really working against our efforts to do something about climate.
LEE BEY (00:29):
Are there people? Maybe you don't want to say their names. Maybe you do. Are the people or the people in office who can change policy and make this easier because, you know, we're not talking about a design style or a thing. It's not PoMo. It's not, you know, we're talking about how to make buildings in a way that that encourage that bring life that, that, that don't fill up our basements with storm water, that don't fill up our landfills with crazy stuff. I mean, so there's a, you know, there's a real seriousness to this. Who who do you want to get in the room with you to talk about?
JEANNE GANG (00:30):
Yeah, I think it's about creating incentives. You know, that which would give developers or or building owners, you know, benefits if they reuse the building, certain percentage of the building or, you know, that that that's kind of a basic, you know, thing that would help it a lot. And let's see who would be in charge of that. You don't.
LEE BEY (00:31):
A mayor.
JEANNE GANG (00:32):
I mean, the mayor.
LEE BEY (00:33):
Yeah.
JEANNE GANG (00:34):
Mayor would be good. But, you know, you will always have lobbies against those. People like to keep things in the same way that they are, and they're they're mobilized to do that. So, you know, we need a few champions and a cool building that, that, that breaks through the, the, the, negativity to be a shining example of what this could be.
LEE BEY (00:35):
Because that flat table is political as well. It's easier to do it that way, easier to do the way we've been doing it. But you want what you want, but it's time to shake things up a bit you're saying.
JEANNE GANG (00:36):
Yes, I think we got to, you know, we got to find new ways to reduce the the construction. It's a huge amount of the carbon emissions. But there's also other aspects to it, of course, like how communities are tied to their to the fabric and, and, so I think there's many different scales that this could be useful for.
LEE BEY (00:37):
I think we got about ten minutes left. Can we shift gears a little bit? I want to ask about the process of writing a book. I've only done one. This is this is number three. What do you, what do you put into it? Talk about the process of doing a book like this or any that you've done.
JEANNE GANG (00:38):
Yeah, this one's kind of more. It's like a, because of teaching. And I teach at the GSB and teach students, and I, I, started trying to challenge them. I actually started with thinking about adding on to brutalist buildings because brutalist buildings are they were they used to be loathed by everyone except for architects. But now because they're kind of on Instagram, people are starting to like them again. But but so we were but those are often buildings that are difficult to reuse so I was trying to get challenges to the students. And so we all the, the studios were about this kind of reuse. And then it started to In teaching oftentimes you're doing more research and you're doing more theoretical research about, like what is the history of this process and so on. So that gave me a lot of good information and started to create new ideas about like how this could be transformed into a building operation as opposed to a horticultural practice, which is so fascinating. And then I started to meet, various people writing in this space. One of them I recently did an event was in Paris, Emanuele Coccia, who did a book called "The Life of Plants," which is very good. And he talks about how, you know, plants, how do they actually produce the conditions for us to live? And it's a quite a good book. And so these conversations start happening. And you just what happened with this book is there were too many subjects. And so they were, it was the work of this book was trying to make it cohesive into a subject, but also let it be a little bit grafted here and there. So there's some personal reflections in there, and there's this idea of the forest. But they come together around this idea.
LEE BEY (00:39):
You know, I like what you said in the in the presentation, we talked about how grafting fixes in plants fixes a wound or deals or incorporates a wound to make something new to to Wounded City. We can think about some of, many big cities. When you think about some of the brownfields that are just sort of southwards, my god, 500 acres on the lakefront that people have been scratching their heads and what you do with for a generation.
JEANNE GANG (00:40):
I know, and I just think if we would have planted trees there and started to remediate the soils that long ago, it would be ready by now. So, I always love the the saying that the best time to plant a tree is like 20 years ago. But but I mean, we got to start now because, you know, this is the emergency time.
LEE BEY (00:41):
You know, going to some of the give me two questions from the audience. Two, that's that's the best you can do with - two questions. But one of my I ask a whole bunch was like a shotgun pellets. Hit her one question there. One question. We have a shortage of affordable housing. What makes the most sense to adapt and repurpose? Is it office buildings? Is it empty strip malls? Is it empty vertical malls? Is it old grocery stores? Or is it vacant schools?
JEANNE GANG (00:42):
All of the above, I mean it. It is true. There is a shortage of housing, and it's going to be getting worse because there has not been new housing added to the building stock. And and we have new arrivals and we need housing like crazy. So it makes the most sense of anything to use buildings that are under utilized. Like I would, you know, our team, we were thinking about the schools that are there. Those would make great - but offices too, can and you know, nowadays when we're doing designing buildings like large scale buildings, we we think about the reversibility. So think about that now. And you're designing to make it easier in the future to, to switch it out. But but still, I think we have a lot of buildings in Chicago. All of those listed would be great housing ideas.
LEE BEY (00:43):
And we still got a few schools, lingering around. Just just just got. What oh, let me see. There's another question. Is there a we talked about Prentice, talked about Soldier Field. Is there. A project in the city. That you love to get your hands on the building. White Sox Park. Maybe, for example, I mean, the existing that thing that they want to build at the 78, but.
JEANNE GANG (00:44):
I, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, right now about the, the vacant office offices and the how that's hurting downtown. And that that's a great opportunity to start thinking about, housing for, like, essential workers or people that wouldn't otherwise be able to live downtown where, you know, and to start to make sure that we have people in proximity to where the jobs can be and where they are. So, I think that we should be thinking about, of course, our downtown, because we don't want it to empty out. And that means there's a couple of buildings that are slated to be torn down right by the. By the Dirksen Center, also on State Street that you know that I've heard are going to be, you know, taken away. But those would be great buildings for some housing as well, even if they haven't been lived in for a while, they would have to be checked. But all of that is possible.
LEE BEY (00:45):
This is a that's this is a good idea. And, you know, readers of the Sun-Times and the architecture critic probably know that it's the, it's the Century & Consumers Building.
JEANNE GANG (00:46):
Yes.
LEE BEY (00:47):
Right there at Adams and, and State, bought by the federal government, I don't know, almost 20 years ago there about but now they want to demolish them to build a safety perimeter, safety plaza for the Dirksen Federal Building. So judges in the federal law enforcement have said about this, the city does not want this to happen. And and, Senator Dick Durbin, you know, and this is not to throw you shame he appropriated $54 million to the demolition when there's an idea that, you know, you could take that earmark back and appropriated $54 million for their, renovation and have a lot better process, project.
JEANNE GANG (00:48):
No. Yeah.
LEE BEY (00:49):
Yeah. Other places. Century & Consumers Building. Maybe, you know, transit, rivers. Things that you think that maybe this could apply to, too.
JEANNE GANG (00:50):
One thing that we looked at with the studio is like, there's a lot of these small, anonymous banks all over the place, and, and banks are not it's all going digital. So like, those would be, and they're they're really distributed throughout the city. All different kinds of architecture, good and bad. But, you know, I think maybe there would be a nice project to think about. Like, what could what use could a bank be, especially with this distribution so evenly throughout the city. Could be really great place to even if it's only, you know, the short term use for community or for, you know, vital meeting spaces that people need, but you know it, those would be, I think they're everywhere. I've seen banks going out of business everywhere, and they're a lot of times there are actually brutalist, little brutalist buildings sometimes, like in Pullman. And, those would be a really great building to kind of reactivate.
LEE BEY (00:51):
Pullman is a great one. There's a U.S. bank building many of you know, if you've been in the Bishop Ford at 111th Street, it looks like there was a skyscraper race downtown, and this one is coming in last. It's something like 200 story, a 200ft tall, almost. And it's just sort of there, and it's largely empty and below some of the beautiful views you can see. You can look downtown.
JEANNE GANG (00:52):
Absolutely. And you can go play golf at Harborside.
LEE BEY (00:53):
Yeah, sure.
JEANNE GANG (00:54):
It's got it all. No, but that building was reclad at one point.
LEE BEY (00:55):
It was?
JEANNE GANG (00:56):
But but it didn't. But there's maybe that building needs, like, to bust out and have some balconies or something like that.
LEE BEY (00:57):
For it. For it. Well, good. Well, I think we are at our end. Give Jeanne a big -
[Audience applause]
[Theme music plays]
ALISA ROSENTHAL (01:00):
That was Jeanne Gang and Lee Bey, live at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, at the Chicago Humanities Spring Festival in 2024.
Head to the show notes for more information on Gang’s book The Art of Architectural Grafting, as well as links and resources to some of the other works mentioned.
Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the team at Chicago Humanities for the programming and production of the live events. Head to chicagohumanities.org for more information on how to catch your favorite speaker in person the next time they’re in town. New episodes of Chicago Humanities Tapes drop first thing every other Tuesday morning wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave us a review, share your favorite episode with your friends, and scroll through our incredible backlog of programs to discover a gem that might surprise you. We’ll be back in two weeks with an exclusive interview - author and poet Kaveh Akbar swings by the Chicago Humanities Tapes studio to chat with me about his book Martyr! — which was just announced as being on the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction longlist — as well as his October 26th live event at Northwestern University with author John Green.
KAVEH AKBAR (01:03):
Yeah, I'm fascinated by dreams. I love talking to people about their dreams. I know that some people roll their eyes or whatever when you it's like some people treat it like you're talking about your fantasy football team or something. We spend a third of our lives with our brains putting on these elaborate productions for us, cast with characters from our actual lives behaving in these sort of strange, gnomic, terrifying ways, and we're not supposed to talk about that? I think I'm right. Every morning when we wake up, ask my spouse if they've dreamt because if they have, I get to start the day with my best friend telling me a story,
Thanks for listening, and in the meantime, stay human.
[Music fades out]
[Cassette tape player clicks shut]
I think we tend to think of a building as a single author, and we have to rethink that too because there are there could be multiple authors.
(00:01):
[Theme music plays]
ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:02):
Hey all what’s going on, this is Chicago Humanities Tapes, the audio extension of the live Chicago Humanities Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, and today we’re bringing you architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang.
As the founding partner of architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang, Jeanne and her firm are known for designing the 82-story Aqua Tower on Chicago’s skyline and the St. Regis Chicago.
In today’s program, you’ll hear Jeanne discuss her latest book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, where she digs into how the horticultural practice of “grafting” — joining a new plant to an older one so they can grow and thrive as one — inspires a fresh paradigm for sustainable design. Then, you’ll hear her joined by Lee Bey, an editorial writer and architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, as they chat through Chicago’s contemporary architecture problems and promises.
For more information on our speakers, head to the show notes, or check out chicagohumanities.org, where you’ll also find ticket information on our upcoming live Fall 2024 events. Tickets are on sale now for Connie Chung, Richard Powers, Joan Baez, and so much more.
This is Jeanne Gang and Lee Bey at the stunning and cavernous First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple in Spring 2024.
[Theme music plays]
[Audience applause]
JEANNE GANG (00:09):
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, I’m happy to be here tonight and, excited to talk with Lee in a bit. So. What I wanted to do is just to, start with presenting a little bit about, the way that this book came about. So by going through a couple of old projects and ideas that that led to the introductions project. So I'm happy to be here tonight with my team. So hello, Studio. I know a lot of people here. And what what I wanted to talk about, it really is this lifelong observation of nature. And I've always really been inspired by nature and its solutions. Its beauty. And also there's this kind of resilience. And, one of the things that we've done in Chicago is start this experimental rooftop in our headquarters in Wicker Park. And it's really about creating as much biodiversity as possible in the middle of the city. So when I founded the studio on this idea of, of this kind of medium of architecture that could be used to help people and the planet, it was an approach that originally, was about recycling. And so when we first started our first projects, a lot of it was about like using materials that were already available. So starting with what's there. What's really exciting about Chicago is this kind of overlay that you get between natural systems and industrial materials, and the south side where migratory birds are, are, flying over these, post industrial lands. And so, under this kind of rubric, we designed buildings that could be used, made, made like a nest, like a bird's nest, using materials that are already there or nearby. Lowering the energy use. So what I get really excited about is, is designing a building that would be used only by acquiring these materials that are nearby. And so this first building that we did, although it was never built, was cited in the Calumet area, which has all these fertile ecosystems, but all these industrial remnants. And so, this project was really it kind of became this touchstone for us, even though it wasn't built. And it also had to do with how to protect migratory birds from crashing into window glass, that they cannot see. So that became an obsession. And, there's really with this building project, there was really this reciprocity between, the building and the place, which I really liked. And so we continue to try to work on that. Another angle for making architecture good for the planet and for people is really about creating higher density in cities. The footprint of just like the amount of households that live in the Aqua Tower, for example, in this compact footprint, the households produce much less carbon emissions per, per household than you would in the spread out other arrangement that you get as you as you spread out and sprawl out in the cities. So that we've have focused a bit on, tall buildings and of course, with the Aqua Tower, it was really informed by these kind of layers, that are almost like the natural rock formations that you get around the lake. But it's really designed to make the city feel amazing when you live there and to connect to people, and they can connect to each other and the city environment. Okay. One other way you can use, buildings and architecture to improve the environment is by using bio based materials. And that means materials that have low embodied carbon, so much less carbon than they than steel, let's say, are concrete. So it's also really fun to work with wood because it's so alive as a material to use. So this social justice center where we used it's a small campus, at Kalamazoo, where we used cordwood masonry, which is like using logs instead of bricks. With beautiful results. I think really looks like, a fabric. And then it's also embodying this kind of social justice ethos for the building. Building with wood can scale up too, because now we have many new materials that are allowing us to just substitute out wood slabs, let's say, for steel slabs. For the campus at UC Santa Cruz, we used a lot of those materials called mass timber, for the construction. And we were building within this kind of redwood forest, which is really amazing setting, to build a building and you get these incredible finishes that are also, make people feel good because it's a natural material. So this really brings me to, the reason why I wanted to start talking about renovation and reuse, because it's kind of obvious that to to be good for the environment and use less energy, it it really makes sense to use buildings that are already there. But sometimes those buildings don't meet the needs, like buildings that are already there might not meet the needs of what the, the city needs, and they might not be big enough or they might not be fit out for that. So I started to think about another way for that. And it brings me to this project, which is the Prentice Hospital, which some of you might know. Prentice Women's Hospital, which was by Birgit Goldberg. It was kind of an obvious way to to reuse this building and, to save, I think reuse, save something like 50 to 75% of the carbon emissions. But in this case, the owner, which was Northwestern University, really needed a bigger building. And they, it was enough to dissuade them from reusing this building, even though it was a significant architectural landmark. And so what happened was if if you don't remember, we had, a big fight to try to save it, but, the alderman ultimately said that he didn't want to tear down the building, but he was remaining open to suggestions and he said, believe me, if there's a eureka moment, I'm all ears. And, but, you know, I guess the eureka moment never came. And, and what happened was, that building was torn down. But but this is exactly when I started to think about grafting, actually, because I looked at this plan and saw that the middle section in this model, you can see it was open. It doesn't have cores in it, like what you typically get in the middle of a high rise. So, there was an idea there that we could put a core to hold a bigger building, down the middle of this building. So I proposed at the time to save Prentice, but to do so through this kind of third way to add capacity to the building, but keep the root stock and we'll get into that, what that is. But these things are not mutually exclusive. So it would be a new building growing out of the old one. So, what was interesting to me about that was that Michael Kimmelman, who was the critic, is also still the critic for The New York Times, decided to write about this idea. And it was interesting because the title of the article, kind of foreshadows this approach to grafting. It's a vision enabling a clover to bloom. Okay, so that's kind of the idea to hold that in mind. So carbon reduction and adaptive reuse in general, they're often treated as this kind of technical exercise. And, and not really an impetus for design creativity. And what we need, I think, are new metaphors and new taxonomies that can help expand this creativity of reusing things. So maybe grafting could provide this new model. And we but it's like we need this more precise language. And that's why, I started working on this book.
[Music]
So what is grafting? Horticultural grafting. It's really this uniquely vivid term that refers to this agricultural technique of connecting two separate living plants, one old and one new, so that they can grow and function as one. And it's really motivated by that, both the human needs and desires. But it's like this ancient practice and it's been going on for a very long time, and it's still performed today. And in fact, every every fruit that you eat is is a product of grafting. And it's about making the fruit more delicious and more new plant varieties. And so it has this really kind of relevant, relationship with architecture because that's what we need to do right now. I've been using this idea with my students at Harvard, actually doing some horticultural grafting and and trying to learn the things that that can be relevant, like care and precision and, compatibility and those kinds of things. When I was researching the book, I went into a lot of the old libraries and found these beautiful drawings that are representative of the fact that it's an art and a technique at the same time. And today it's kind of interesting because with plants that are so resilient, they have this regenerative capacity. And then there's the place where you graft is actually a wound, and it's a healing action in response to this wound. So there's some really interesting things that we could dive into more. And there are art practices like these, the guerrilla grafters that are, they go around and graft, new fruit branches onto living street trees because the street trees are, actually sterile. And what they're trying to do is call attention to, like, food insecurity and things like that. So there's many different types of grafting. So to me, they started to suggest ways of adding on to building structures. And so that that's where we started getting into, the book and this kind of design philosophy that would be about it's about like upcycling the building, in other words, getting more use out of the existing buildings and building capacity on, on those buildings. And it's just a way of creating a new, distinctive, flourishing work of architecture. So in the book, there are some, like rules, not rules, but it's really like some things I've observed about how they can work together. So I just want to go over a couple projects that that show what I mean. We recently finished the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, which was a conglomeration of many, many different additions over time in in little Rock. I think eight different additions, eight different structural systems, eight different mechanical systems. And it was really messed up. So, but the original building was this 1937, deco building, which was really but it was actually buried deep inside all of the additions. And so what we did there was kind of scrape out this new organizational axis and reveal the old building once again. So, so it's kind of pruning it back and then adding something new to let it flourish. And you can see here some of the early models and like I said, this was completed less than a year ago. And, it's it's really been a boost to allow the museum to live on. It's like giving it a new lease on life. As well as the Gilder Center American Museum of Natural History. We had some kind of almost similar situation with, I don't know if you've ever been there, but it it's like "Night at the Museum" was filmed you know about this place. But it had a lot of dead ends, and visitors were confused where to go. And they kind of just built in all of their, their courtyards and filled them up. So our addition, is meant to, kind of give it new life by connecting it and letting the the people flow through. This is kind of. It's grafted into the center of the building in order to get closest to these flows. And we created something like 30 new connections for people to move through the space. And then it's, it's but it's something new, but it is in dialog with what's already there. And I can explain that by showing you that the green, that that strange form in the center is really a a structure almost like a natural structure that holds the new floors. And then you can see how they line up with the other floors that are not green on either side and really bring people together in, in that central space. So this this building is all about it has many classrooms and it's really about, you know, connecting people to nature in new ways. And it reminded us of this flow that you get in natural landscapes and connectivity. And if you picture if you got really small, this could be like, you know, the of course, like water coursing through a plant as well. You have this desire for movement. And so for, so for people they can connect through and, and not have any dead ends. And bringing in natural light and all of this had to sit on existing foundations. It's a, it's a structure made out of shot create that is had uses no formwork and it rests on existing foundation. So here in the library there’s a column that goes all the way down to the base. So in terms of grafting, I think it's interesting to look at the facades. On the upper register is on the Central Park West facade, with a neoclassical entry, and the new facade, which it is in dialog with that older facade. It's not replicating it, but there is some kind of, reciprocity between the old and the new, which I think is what helps make it work. So it's pretty, but it's also the same material as the Central Park West facade. So there's there's connection, there's dialog. But something new to help the building survive. Okay, now, this little project, it doesn't always have to be a big landmark to to think about reuse. And this little lab that we were asked to design, on a campus in New York. With this, I'll just say it's an ugly building, but, it was a dorm, evidently. But they really didn't. No one wanted to live there. So, we, we were asked to turn it into a lab. Well, first they said, tear down the building and build a lab. And we said, why not try to reuse what we can and build the capacity here? So to do that, you really have to get into what's already there all the materials, all the foundations, all the structure, and then to build this up, to get more daylight and to get space for the mechanical systems we used a wood construction. This was the existing, then you kind of splice onto the school, columns, you add girders, and we're creating a new higher ceiling and a new, image for the building as well, at the same time. So wood is very good for grafting on architecture because it's lightweight. We didn't have to add any foundations or these other components, just work with what is already there, and the new is clearly legible from the old. And then the, the image of the building is renewed. So almost like a kind of new building, but just using what was already there. Okay. So finally, I just want to talk about, this book also has a section on forests. And the reason why is because we found out that, you know, as we use all these new wood materials that sometimes they are being shipped from far, far away. So it kind of takes out the whole idea about being sustainable and reducing carbon. When you have to ship the material of the wood from far away. So we need wood for grafting. And that's when we started thinking about forests and where the wood comes from. So in the US, the forests are really located in the southeast and the northwest. But there’s all that blank area in between right around Chicago. A lot of people don't remember, but Chicago was this major timber place in the United States. It was the kind of clearing house for wood. And you can see the piles and piles of timber there on the left in the late 1800s. And then, of course, we know we have all these, you know, loft buildings that we love, and they're all timber structures. It's just hard now because after the fire, the the city doesn't, you know, really like, want us to build wood anymore. So we have to change the, change the regulations. But like I said, with these new products, I think we can really start to integrate timber into our buildings once again. So what fascinated me with, like, this realization is just that, I love this region. And, you know, in the 20% of all freshwater is like from the Great Lakes. And then we have, like, all these polluted sites that are unusable from, Calumet and all around. So it's really. This kind of rust belt that that that is unused lands, underutilized lands. So the book kind of also looks at redesigning the forest. Forests are very, they're all different and they are a living system. And so I think instead of thinking of forests as plantations just to get wood, we could get multiple uses out of them and even jobs and even, you know, revitalization of Chicago. So I start to, look at, you know, what the polluted areas are, the brownfields, for example. And, and we do have this one CLT plant, there on the left, which is a, mass timber production, but they make mats for trucks to drive on. So we want to shift and start producing building materials. And I think we can start to imagine what the city could look like with starting with a few pilots, designing forests that have benefits, multiple benefits. And in the next decade, start growing this green timber, industry, where there would be new jobs and, kind of create a resilient ecosystem. So I just want to end with this image. This is like a classic image from, architecture school. If you are architects, you will remember this image. But as the Essays on Architecture, it it's always thought of as like kind of the beginning of modernity, and modern thinking with, Laugier's image, where. He was actually saying that the there is, an essence to architecture. And so but what happened was, it modernity and industrialization, we kind of went away from this idea. Laugier himself went and re-imagined this idea in a more, technical way. And so, we after 250 years, we've been thinking that we're separate from nature. And so we never thought of, you know, how architecture and animals and every all of us, our kin and plants as well. And so now we're at this pivotal moment where we have to rethink our relationship with nature and no longer, think of it as, separate. And so if you look closely at this image, what I found was amazing is it actually looks like architectural grafting. That's it. Thank you very much.
[Music]
LEE BEY (00:13):
Another hand for Jeanne. Amazing. You know, I, I think I ripped up my, my Q and A at least 5 or 6 times because your your talk is so thorough. You know where to begin. You know, I was struck by Alderman Riley's quote, when it came to the fate of Prentice Hospital. I mean, there's always an excuse, right, to, to demolish buildings. And it reminded me, it reminded me of a quote, from 1971, Chicago alderman who says, he's talking about a certain building, and I'll tell you what it is in a second. He says, "It's not really a question of whether the building was worthy of landmark designation. It was a matter of weighing the aesthetic value of the building with the money involved, to buy and maintain it. It would be true of any landmark in the city." The building this all of us talking about is the Louis Sullivan Stock Exchange building. And within three months it was gone. So we were in a way we're fighting the same battle, but you you showing us a different way. Talk about that.
JEANNE GANG (00:14):
Well, I agree with you that there's always an excuse. And it it leads to it's really about it's very pragmatic costs and hassles and things like that about, reusing something. But sometimes, you know, if, if you're in the middle of a city, like with Prentice, you can kind of understand it's like under scaled, let's say, for how the city has grown up. And so that's what really led me to thinking of, like, what if we could still expand? I think of Rome and there's yeah, there's buildings built on top of buildings built on top of buildings. And we can preserve some of that history, but also still let it live by bringing new uses to it. And so, but it's a different way of thinking, because I think we tend to think of a building as a single author, and we have to rethink that, too, because there are there could be multiple authors, and it's asynchronous collaboration in a way, because you have to assess the building you're starting with. And I know I said that one building was ugly, but I actually you have to find what you love about it. And that's the only way that it works. You have to like, kind of find what you love. And then and so with with the students, we always like do a lot of drawings of the original building. And it's kind of about imagining what would that architect have done, even though you can't really imagine that. But it's a good way into thinking about grafting.
LEE BEY (00:15):
You know, this makes me think of perhaps a question on our lakefront right now, dealing with Soldier Field. Many of you probably know, that the certain professional football team, with a abysmal record, typically. I'm a Bears fans so it hurts hurts to see, but it's therapeutic to get it out in public like this. That, they want to build a stadium on the lake next to the one that you've already got. A dome stadium, which obviously is going to be larger. So in a way, two two questions in that
JEANNE GANG (00:16):
Okay. So the first part, is it an example of grafting? It, it is because it's reusing something and adding something new. It might not follow all of my rules that I have in the book, but but it does. It brought new life. Look at how long we've been able to use the stadium when I think it wasn't it the same argument before, like they were going to leave and and so they got this new - so it breathed new life into the structure and, and the city for that matter, for a number of years. And I think, I think it would be worth analyzing if it could be expanded again. I mean, it did already lose its historic building status, and nobody wants to see Soldier Field, the colonnades go away. So. But maybe there would be at at least it should be looked at, not just say "it doesn't work."
LEE BEY (00:17):
And. So then that will be in place of the domed - I'm trying to find the right word - solution.
JEANNE GANG (00:18):
Well, yes. Well, I don't know what their new solution is, but it seems like kind of. Well, it seems a bit, wasteful let's just say to, like, tear down a stadium or even leave it there and build another one right next to it, like, it just seems like a waste of, especially in this time. Reason why is that because I didn't go into this, but between we really have to save embodied carbon. There's two types of carbon emissions. There's, you know, the operational carbon, which is like the heating you use, the air conditioning you use. And if the building is good at, you know, insulating, and we've done a lot with that and we've made big gains in that. But then there's the embodied carbon. So that's the thing that we really need to drill down on now, which is all the energy that goes into making the materials that go into the building and all the shipping and all the things that those are the things that we really need to, reduce at this moment in this climate emergency that we're in. And so that's why, I mean, if energy and climate were no issue and it was, you know, then you would have the issue of the lakefront. Okay. But but if they were not an issue, then it might be a different story. But it is an issue, so it bothers me.
LEE BEY (00:19):
Me and you both. Really, it really does. You know. In some way, you're pushing against this this novel idea is rubbing up against a couple of sort of age old things. Here in Chicago, but also nationally and internationally. Which is this sense of obsolescence that a building is too old, tear it down. We heard that throughout the 60s with North, with, Prentice Northwestern. We'll hear it probably before the week is out. Next week is out with something or another. And we were talking about obsolescence and how that was kind of almost an invented term invented here in Chicago, actually. But but we'll talk about how this pushes against that in some way.
JEANNE GANG (00:20):
Yeah. Because I mean obsolescence, you can you know, what it is like when it comes to little technical devices. You know, one doesn't work anymore and you need to it - so you have to shift to the next technology. But buildings are not like that. I mean, look at the building we're sitting in right now. They last longer than iPods and all those things. So, so but what happened was they invented the kind of, it was an invented term in order to help. But the thing about obsolescence is, if you build a building right next door to this building and it has newer features, maybe all the renters and are going to want to go to that building. So what it really describes when it comes to buildings is there's a newer one next door, and that one's going to get all the people. So we need to, you know, kind of write off this building so that we can build another new one. So it's about taxes and it's it was an invented, tax, you know, taxing way, ledgers that would help to devalue the buildings so that you could then tear them down. But, you know, frankly, that was a very shocking thing to people like in the 1920s when, like, buildings that had just gone up were suddenly being torn down. So there was like this, this kind of unease about it on the public's part. So that's why obsolescence was a way to describe the reason you have to tear that down is because of this and this and this. But they're kind of it's artificial reasons. It's not. The building is not worn out and it and it you know so. So that that part is really interesting. And that's the great book by Daniel Abramson called, "Obsolescence." That is, that really does a good job of explaining that if you're interested.
LEE BEY (00:21):
You know, it really is a good book again. Obsolescence. He talks about, how the, what's now BOMA, the Building, the Building Owners and Managers Association and other groups kind of created this and, idea in that as a result. And this, you know, this gets at what you're talking about, how this kind of it's kind of calculation cynical as they may be they put buildings at risk, you know, so he had the Hulbert Roots, Hobart Roche's Tacoma Building and others. Just one, you know, one after another come down. It makes me think a bit about what you just mentioned. It makes me think a bit about LaSalle Street. Here down that downtown LaSalle Street financial corridor where, the new buildings along the river, gleaming, beautiful buildings and law firms, financial institutions, the places that made LaSalle Street LaSalle Street, or would be camping and ending up there. And what do you do with the buildings? City has a solution on the table with regard to housing. But what do you think about that and what might be added to that?
JEANNE GANG (00:22):
Well, yeah, I think those buildings could be, reused. And they should and we should be open to thinking about adding on to them to give them the features that people want in their in their workspaces today, which is, you know, maybe they are they need some floors with higher ceilings, maybe they need more amenities. But those are things that could be could be added onto these buildings in interesting ways. And then you would have this new work of architecture that would be, you know, it wouldn't be a pristine, historically renovated, building. It would be something new. But that's where we are right now. I think we we need to have new ways to think about these things.
LEE BEY (00:23):
You know, I wonder if you also fighting against the power of the blank slate, or the cleared site, you know, particularly in Chicago, the urban renewal of things. You know, there's a power, political, economic behind the idea of just raking a site clean and starting a new. Again, you're showing us a different way.
JEANNE GANG (00:24):
Yeah, that that's kind of like a good example of, like in, like urban strategies that were coming from modernism, like, you know, tabula rasa. And, and those are no longer really valid either. And we, we should like, see what's there, take stock and, and work with it, that we kind of preserve some of the history, but also, the lives of people that have lived in a place and, and kind of try to transform, starting with what's already there.
LEE BEY (00:25):
You know, I think about, Herb Greenwald and Mies, for example. You know, finding the right client. How important is that in this kind of work? Finding the right client who gets this? And I know there are many out there do you think?
JEANNE GANG (00:26):
Well, I think I just want to tell you about the contrasting example, because our office, we also work in Europe and have an office in Paris, and a lot of the architects that I know, colleagues in Paris, they they're really hamstrung by not tearing anything down. And they are feeling like, what's going to happen, the city can't grow. And so they have the opposite extreme problem. But that's what's funny about grafting, because it kind of applies to both situations. Like it's showing a way to live for the city to live by adding on to it and grafting on to it. But so I think in both markets there is not yet they're not yet ready for this. So we need to, you know, show how it can be compelling. And, and also it would help to have some policy around it, I guess. But you're right, it's not exactly like people are, they would much rather just, like start here, start with a clean slate. Makes life easier, I think.
LEE BEY (00:27):
You know, you know, one of the projects that, in the book and by the way, please get the book because it's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. You talk about a concept in Cicero. You know, working class, largely Latino suburb to the to the west and western south of Oak Park a bit. And you talk about the garden in the machine, which of course made me think of Leo Marx's "The Machine in the Garden." I'm 64, and, how how those two compare. Talk about that that Cicero idea and how it compares with Marx.
JEANNE GANG (00:28):
Yeah, that was another one that that kind of on the way up to this grafting concept because, you know, we have a lot there was a lot of foreclosure in Cicero. And there was a lot of vacancy and abandonment, and especially with the factory fabrics. So it was a way of thinking of, you know, how could you use some of those factory properties, remediate them with, trees, phyto remediation and other methods of remediation, and then use those buildings to start creating a mixed fabric of both the bungalows and the the factory buildings and kind of create a new hybrid. That would be really interesting for, you know, that that would apply to people that live there today. They could have live, work, and maker spaces in those factories, and it would just give some opportunity to a place that it's really like set up in a separated way. You know, you have your bungalows and then you have your, you know, factories and there are green spaces dedicated, but there's nothing is mixing. And so but in order to do that, we found that you'd have to like rewrite the zoning code to be because it's set up like that to separate everything. Yeah. So I think policy is, is really huge for and for making these changes. And that's what is difficult right now with the way things are, polarized. It's really working against our efforts to do something about climate.
LEE BEY (00:29):
Are there people? Maybe you don't want to say their names. Maybe you do. Are the people or the people in office who can change policy and make this easier because, you know, we're not talking about a design style or a thing. It's not PoMo. It's not, you know, we're talking about how to make buildings in a way that that encourage that bring life that, that, that don't fill up our basements with storm water, that don't fill up our landfills with crazy stuff. I mean, so there's a, you know, there's a real seriousness to this. Who who do you want to get in the room with you to talk about?
JEANNE GANG (00:30):
Yeah, I think it's about creating incentives. You know, that which would give developers or or building owners, you know, benefits if they reuse the building, certain percentage of the building or, you know, that that that's kind of a basic, you know, thing that would help it a lot. And let's see who would be in charge of that. You don't.
LEE BEY (00:31):
A mayor.
JEANNE GANG (00:32):
I mean, the mayor.
LEE BEY (00:33):
Yeah.
JEANNE GANG (00:34):
Mayor would be good. But, you know, you will always have lobbies against those. People like to keep things in the same way that they are, and they're they're mobilized to do that. So, you know, we need a few champions and a cool building that, that, that breaks through the, the, the, negativity to be a shining example of what this could be.
LEE BEY (00:35):
Because that flat table is political as well. It's easier to do it that way, easier to do the way we've been doing it. But you want what you want, but it's time to shake things up a bit you're saying.
JEANNE GANG (00:36):
Yes, I think we got to, you know, we got to find new ways to reduce the the construction. It's a huge amount of the carbon emissions. But there's also other aspects to it, of course, like how communities are tied to their to the fabric and, and, so I think there's many different scales that this could be useful for.
LEE BEY (00:37):
I think we got about ten minutes left. Can we shift gears a little bit? I want to ask about the process of writing a book. I've only done one. This is this is number three. What do you, what do you put into it? Talk about the process of doing a book like this or any that you've done.
JEANNE GANG (00:38):
Yeah, this one's kind of more. It's like a, because of teaching. And I teach at the GSB and teach students, and I, I, started trying to challenge them. I actually started with thinking about adding on to brutalist buildings because brutalist buildings are they were they used to be loathed by everyone except for architects. But now because they're kind of on Instagram, people are starting to like them again. But but so we were but those are often buildings that are difficult to reuse so I was trying to get challenges to the students. And so we all the, the studios were about this kind of reuse. And then it started to In teaching oftentimes you're doing more research and you're doing more theoretical research about, like what is the history of this process and so on. So that gave me a lot of good information and started to create new ideas about like how this could be transformed into a building operation as opposed to a horticultural practice, which is so fascinating. And then I started to meet, various people writing in this space. One of them I recently did an event was in Paris, Emanuele Coccia, who did a book called "The Life of Plants," which is very good. And he talks about how, you know, plants, how do they actually produce the conditions for us to live? And it's a quite a good book. And so these conversations start happening. And you just what happened with this book is there were too many subjects. And so they were, it was the work of this book was trying to make it cohesive into a subject, but also let it be a little bit grafted here and there. So there's some personal reflections in there, and there's this idea of the forest. But they come together around this idea.
LEE BEY (00:39):
You know, I like what you said in the in the presentation, we talked about how grafting fixes in plants fixes a wound or deals or incorporates a wound to make something new to to Wounded City. We can think about some of, many big cities. When you think about some of the brownfields that are just sort of southwards, my god, 500 acres on the lakefront that people have been scratching their heads and what you do with for a generation.
JEANNE GANG (00:40):
I know, and I just think if we would have planted trees there and started to remediate the soils that long ago, it would be ready by now. So, I always love the the saying that the best time to plant a tree is like 20 years ago. But but I mean, we got to start now because, you know, this is the emergency time.
LEE BEY (00:41):
You know, going to some of the give me two questions from the audience. Two, that's that's the best you can do with - two questions. But one of my I ask a whole bunch was like a shotgun pellets. Hit her one question there. One question. We have a shortage of affordable housing. What makes the most sense to adapt and repurpose? Is it office buildings? Is it empty strip malls? Is it empty vertical malls? Is it old grocery stores? Or is it vacant schools?
JEANNE GANG (00:42):
All of the above, I mean it. It is true. There is a shortage of housing, and it's going to be getting worse because there has not been new housing added to the building stock. And and we have new arrivals and we need housing like crazy. So it makes the most sense of anything to use buildings that are under utilized. Like I would, you know, our team, we were thinking about the schools that are there. Those would make great - but offices too, can and you know, nowadays when we're doing designing buildings like large scale buildings, we we think about the reversibility. So think about that now. And you're designing to make it easier in the future to, to switch it out. But but still, I think we have a lot of buildings in Chicago. All of those listed would be great housing ideas.
LEE BEY (00:43):
And we still got a few schools, lingering around. Just just just got. What oh, let me see. There's another question. Is there a we talked about Prentice, talked about Soldier Field. Is there. A project in the city. That you love to get your hands on the building. White Sox Park. Maybe, for example, I mean, the existing that thing that they want to build at the 78, but.
JEANNE GANG (00:44):
I, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, right now about the, the vacant office offices and the how that's hurting downtown. And that that's a great opportunity to start thinking about, housing for, like, essential workers or people that wouldn't otherwise be able to live downtown where, you know, and to start to make sure that we have people in proximity to where the jobs can be and where they are. So, I think that we should be thinking about, of course, our downtown, because we don't want it to empty out. And that means there's a couple of buildings that are slated to be torn down right by the. By the Dirksen Center, also on State Street that you know that I've heard are going to be, you know, taken away. But those would be great buildings for some housing as well, even if they haven't been lived in for a while, they would have to be checked. But all of that is possible.
LEE BEY (00:45):
This is a that's this is a good idea. And, you know, readers of the Sun-Times and the architecture critic probably know that it's the, it's the Century & Consumers Building.
JEANNE GANG (00:46):
Yes.
LEE BEY (00:47):
Right there at Adams and, and State, bought by the federal government, I don't know, almost 20 years ago there about but now they want to demolish them to build a safety perimeter, safety plaza for the Dirksen Federal Building. So judges in the federal law enforcement have said about this, the city does not want this to happen. And and, Senator Dick Durbin, you know, and this is not to throw you shame he appropriated $54 million to the demolition when there's an idea that, you know, you could take that earmark back and appropriated $54 million for their, renovation and have a lot better process, project.
JEANNE GANG (00:48):
No. Yeah.
LEE BEY (00:49):
Yeah. Other places. Century & Consumers Building. Maybe, you know, transit, rivers. Things that you think that maybe this could apply to, too.
JEANNE GANG (00:50):
One thing that we looked at with the studio is like, there's a lot of these small, anonymous banks all over the place, and, and banks are not it's all going digital. So like, those would be, and they're they're really distributed throughout the city. All different kinds of architecture, good and bad. But, you know, I think maybe there would be a nice project to think about. Like, what could what use could a bank be, especially with this distribution so evenly throughout the city. Could be really great place to even if it's only, you know, the short term use for community or for, you know, vital meeting spaces that people need, but you know it, those would be, I think they're everywhere. I've seen banks going out of business everywhere, and they're a lot of times there are actually brutalist, little brutalist buildings sometimes, like in Pullman. And, those would be a really great building to kind of reactivate.
LEE BEY (00:51):
Pullman is a great one. There's a U.S. bank building many of you know, if you've been in the Bishop Ford at 111th Street, it looks like there was a skyscraper race downtown, and this one is coming in last. It's something like 200 story, a 200ft tall, almost. And it's just sort of there, and it's largely empty and below some of the beautiful views you can see. You can look downtown.
JEANNE GANG (00:52):
Absolutely. And you can go play golf at Harborside.
LEE BEY (00:53):
Yeah, sure.
JEANNE GANG (00:54):
It's got it all. No, but that building was reclad at one point.
LEE BEY (00:55):
It was?
JEANNE GANG (00:56):
But but it didn't. But there's maybe that building needs, like, to bust out and have some balconies or something like that.
LEE BEY (00:57):
For it. For it. Well, good. Well, I think we are at our end. Give Jeanne a big -
[Audience applause]
[Theme music plays]
ALISA ROSENTHAL (01:00):
That was Jeanne Gang and Lee Bey, live at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, at the Chicago Humanities Spring Festival in 2024.
Head to the show notes for more information on Gang’s book The Art of Architectural Grafting, as well as links and resources to some of the other works mentioned.
Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the team at Chicago Humanities for the programming and production of the live events. Head to chicagohumanities.org for more information on how to catch your favorite speaker in person the next time they’re in town. New episodes of Chicago Humanities Tapes drop first thing every other Tuesday morning wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave us a review, share your favorite episode with your friends, and scroll through our incredible backlog of programs to discover a gem that might surprise you. We’ll be back in two weeks with an exclusive interview - author and poet Kaveh Akbar swings by the Chicago Humanities Tapes studio to chat with me about his book Martyr! — which was just announced as being on the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction longlist — as well as his October 26th live event at Northwestern University with author John Green.
KAVEH AKBAR (01:03):
Yeah, I'm fascinated by dreams. I love talking to people about their dreams. I know that some people roll their eyes or whatever when you it's like some people treat it like you're talking about your fantasy football team or something. We spend a third of our lives with our brains putting on these elaborate productions for us, cast with characters from our actual lives behaving in these sort of strange, gnomic, terrifying ways, and we're not supposed to talk about that? I think I'm right. Every morning when we wake up, ask my spouse if they've dreamt because if they have, I get to start the day with my best friend telling me a story,
Thanks for listening, and in the meantime, stay human.
[Music fades out]
[Cassette tape player clicks shut]
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