Actionable idealism advocate Jeanne Gang wins the 2023 Charlotte Perriand Award

American architect, sustainability advocate, and educator Jeanne Gang has been announced as the recipient of the 2023 Les Prix Charlotte Perriand Award. The founder of Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm Studio Gang, the award celebrates her trailblazing spirit and contribution to the fields. Gang is the second honouree to have received the title, the first laureate being Ghanian-British architect Sir David Adjaye who received it last year. As someone who looks at architecture beyond its physical appearance and instead values its inherent nature in forging relationships, Gang has created spaces and environments that act as social activators inspiring collective change for the past 25 years.

Instituted as part of The Créateurs Design Awards, the architecture award is bestowed in memory of the celebrated French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, whose pioneering work played an integral role in shaping the face of modern architecture and design in the 20^th century. The establishment of this award also marks the first time Perriand’s family has permitted the use of her name beyond her immediate body of work.

Speaking of the late designer who introduced machine-age aesthetic in the interiors, Gang describe Perriand as someone "who fearlessly adopted the advanced tools and techniques of her time, yet deployed them with care and intelligence, finding combinations between materials, the tools of industry, and traditional craft.” Much like her own approach to realising American architecture that affects people on a deeper level, the architect upheld Pierrand’s forward thinking desire which led her to create design that improved people’s quality of lives. The modernist designer’s pioneering works spread across her seven-decade career were the highlight of an exhibition, hosted last year by London’s Design Museum.

Brought up in Belvidere, Illinois, Gang graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1986 and earned her Master’s in architecture in 1993 from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the university where she is currently a Professor in Practice. Before establishing Studio Gang in 1997, she worked with Rem Koolhaas at OMA in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Recognised for challenging the aesthetical and technical possibilities of her field, Gang’s works span a spectrum of typologies, particularly high rise residential developments, cultural and institutional centres, higher education spaces, and government and civic buildings. Some of her most noted works are found in Chicago itself, the city she calls home, and these include the 82-storey undulating Aqua Tower, the Writers Theatre, O'Hare Global Terminal, and the Vista Tower. Besides her architectural contribution, Gang’s studio also works in developing research, publications, and exhibitions through a practice of actionable idealism – a theory that pushes design’s ability to create public awareness and inspire positive change.

An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of several coveted honours including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the Louis I Kahn Memorial Award, and the Marcus Prize, Gang’s focus of practice continues to broaden the horizons of architecture, moving beyond the systems of space, scale, and materiality to creating buildings that act as vessels of human connection, care, and well being. As someone who considers her engineer father to be her role model, the person who taught her values of a profession and the rigour of a practitioner, Gang is also often heard reminiscing her mother’s humorous idioms on life and the lessons she taught her in disguise. An optimist who draws her strength from nature and ecology, Gang has also been named amongst the 100 Most Influential list of Time Magazine’s 2019 issue. She was cited by award-winning actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith as someone with a “WOW factor”, who believes “architecture is not just a wondrous object, it is a catalyst for change.”

The award will be presented to Gang at the Créateurs Design Awards’ annual ceremony on January 21, 2023, in Paris. The evening will also include the presentation of the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award to the winner, Japanese architect and 1995 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Tadao Ando.