Jeanne

Location: Chicago, IL
Status: Built 2010
Client: Magellan Development Group

gang
vLLC
Type: Office, Residential.
Size: 1.9 million square foot
Cost: US $ 300 million
Sustainability: Certified LEED NC

"Good ideas come from every-

where. It's more important to
recognize a good idea than to
author it"

The design was inspired by the striated

limestone outcroppings common in the Great
Lakes area (see photo below). But this sinuous
shape is not just a mere formal gesture, but
Jeanne Gang is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang, an archi- it is also a strategy to extend the views and
tecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Gang maximize solar shading. And by looking at the
was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower, the tallest woman-designed building in the plans we see a rational structure, true to the
world at the time of its completion. Mies legacy in the city.
Born: 19 March 1964 (age 58 years), Belvidere, Illinois, United States
Education: The Illinois School of Architecture, MORE
Spouse: Mark Schendel (m. 1998)
Awards: MacArthur Fellowship
Organization founded: Studio Gang Architects
Aqua tower
82-story mixed-use residential tower (819 ft, 250 m tall):
215 hotels rooms (floors 1-18)
476 rental residential units (floors 19-52)
263 condominium units & Penthouses (floors 53-80)
55,000 square feet (5,100 m2) of retail and office space
6 levels of underground parking.
8-story base (140,000 sqf, 13,000m2) with a a 82,550 sq ft (7,669 m2) ter-
race with gardens, gazebos, pools, hot tubs, a walking/running track and fire
pit.
Height 249.74 m
Floor area 1.9 million meters square
Structural Concrete Materials
Material concrete facade
System structure exposed façade
Color White facade
 Olafur
Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic–Danish artist
known for sculptured and large-scale in-
stallation art employing elemental materials
such as light, water, and air temperature to
enhance the viewer's experience. In 1995 he
established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a
laboratory for spatial research.

Born: 5 February 1967 (age 56 years), Co-

penhagen, Denmark
Parents: Ingibjörg Olafsdottir, Elías Hjörleifs-
son
Spouse: Marianne Krogh Jensen
Awards: Wolf Prize in Arts - Sculpture
Educatio: Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts in Copenhagen.
Endless
staircase

Permanently installed in the atrium of an office building in Munich, two spiral stair-
cases interlock with each other, creating a continuous loop in the form of a double
helix. To plan the work, a double helix was projected onto the surface of a sphere. The
heights of the steps vary slightly to compensate for the curvature of the staircases,
growing shallower at the poles. Precise engineering was necessary to enable the struc-
ture to balance on one point.

The endless staircase is called Umschreibung which is the German word for circum-
scription or periphrasis. The sculpture was finished in 2004 inside the headquarters of
the KPMG trust.
According to the artist, it is supposed to create movement without destination, a space
defined by motion rather than walls. It quickly rose to prominence among the best
photo spots in Munich especially among architecture lovers. Its sometimes also called
the stairway to heaven.

Height: 9 m
Materials: Stainless steel, wood
Form: continuous loop