Gang grew up in Belvidere, Illinois, took an architecture degree at the University of Illinois, spent a year in Rem Koolhaas's office in Rotterdam, finished a master's at Harvard in 1993 and started Studio Gang in Chicago in 1997. Her practice treats a building as an ecological and social instrument before a formal one: the balcony slabs at Aqua were shaped for views, shade, downdraught and bird strikes at once; the Arcus Center in Kalamazoo is built of cordwood masonry laid by local crews; the Gilder Center in New York was shot in place as sprayed concrete over rebar, without formwork. She has argued consistently for reuse over demolition and for what she calls actionable idealism — measuring a design by what it changes rather than by how it looks. She was a MacArthur Fellow in 2011 and has taught at Harvard since the same year.
