For my last two blogs about what Jeanne Gang has accomplished with her amazing designs and her strive to make her building as clean and environmentally safe as possible, I wanted to choose a couple of buildings not in America. This is the Hyderabad O2 in Hyderabad, India and it was built in 2008. Hyderabad 02 transforms the traditional Indian courtyard house into a new porous building type that serves a much larger-scale development, increasing the positive benefits of density in a major urban center. This building is also absolutely massive at 1.3M SF. One of the main things she’d tried to do with this building is incorporate greenery in with the building. This cube-like structure wraps an ample, semi-public courtyard that reveals a faceted interior, stippled with a system of fissure-like corridors that channel breezes through the space and provide natural ventilation for the apartments. Looking into Jeanne Gangs work has been a very exciting and a great learning experience. These builiding and designs are so interesting and so grand it is almost hard to believe that they are even real.

The most intriguing building I think she has ever done has to be the Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Pop Music Center. Like most of her building it targets a LEED Gold (Taiwan Green Building Certification). This building is absolutely incredible with how it looks, I truly have not seen anything like it. My favorite part about the design is how open and spacious everything is and how they incorporated all of the lights around the building. This place truly has everything from an outdoor market to a marine culture exhibit to a the pop music exhibit area. This Music Center is also massive in size, it is an astounding 821,300 SF. It also won Third Prize, Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Pop Music Center International Competition in 2011. The Kaohsiung Maritime Cultural & Pop Music Center, is the coolest building I have ever seen in my entire life.

The writers theatre was built in 2016 in Glencoe Illinois. Here writers can showcase their talents in front of people. This building has also received a LEED Gold Certification. In fair weather the lobby can open to the adjacent park, allowing the energy and interaction generated within the theater to extend outward into the community beyond. The theater’s two performance spaces a 250 seat main stage and 99 seat black box space maximize the sense of intimacy between actors and audience, enhancing the immersive experience of Writers’ productions. My favorite part of the building is the second-floor canopy walk is structured by great timber trusses with a lighter wood lattice hung in tension. I also love how the lobby offers a space for theater-goers and the public alike to gather. It can host a range of events, from talks to informal performances.

Although this building has not been completed yet, something about it instantly caught my eye. I have never actually seen any of Jeanne Gang’s work because a lot of what she does is in Chicago. This particular building is being constructed it in New York City. This massive building that is going to be 190,000 SF and will be and extension of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History. Not only is this building absolutely stunning, it also is targeting LEED gold certification. I love how on her website Studio Gang she goes into details of what inspired different pieces and the layout of the building. In the article she says “We uncovered a way to vastly improve visitor circulation and museum functionality, while tapping into the desire for exploration and discovery that is so emblematic of science and also such a big part of being human. Upon entering the space, natural daylight from above and sight lines to various activities inside invite movement through the Central Exhibition Hall on a journey toward deeper understanding. The architectural design grew out of the museum’s mission.”—Jeanne Gang. This extension to the American Museum of Natural History is absolutely incredible in how the building’s caverns, bridges, and arching walls will be formed using an industrial application of concrete that showcases its liquid properties. This technique, primarily used for infrastructure, creates a continuous interior without material seams or joints that becomes structural as it cures.

The Bizzell Library holds a special place in my heart and is one of the reasons of why I love OU so much. The first I came to visit the University of Oklahoma was Easter Weekend. It was at that moment when I had walked onto the south oval for the time and seen the Biz sitting there with its beautiful gothic architecture that I knew I wanted to come to OU.

In 2015 my family and I took our summer vacation to Hawaii. During this trip we decided to go take a tour of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. This memorial although from the outside does not look very special but it is the inside and what is underneath that matters. The back wall has every name that had died in the bombing of Pearl Harbor during WWII. the floor of the Memorial had a big square opening where you can see the ships underneath that had sunk. This Memorial really helped put into perspective how tragic the bombing of Pearl Harbor really was for so many families in America.

The St. Peterborough Church in England was something I never forget. I had visited England on a mission trip over spring break my senior year of high school and as a field trip we went and visited this church. That trip helped me open up my eyes to a different type of beauty. I had never really taken notice of architecture till I went and saw all these different kind of almost ancient buildings. As I walked into this church I could almost feel the presence of God and all of His glory was just shown throughout the church. I will never forget the time I spent walking through its grand hallways or going into the back prayer rooms.