Social Connector

A new residential tower by Studio Gang fosters neighborly interaction through imaginative architectural form.

- Zach Mortice

As a building type, the high-rise embodies both technical sophistication and something of the architect’s own ego. Yet few architects make their name as creators of consistently good ones; Mies van der Rohe may have been the last. Jeanne Gang, another adoptive Chicagoan, promises to pick up where he left off. For a noncorporate,  non-mega firm, her namesake 87-person Studio Gang has the unique distinction of being defined by its high-rise designs. She announced her presence to the world with her Aqua Tower, in the northeast end of Chicago’s Loop. In the next few years, Gang is due to follow Aqua up with the Vista Tower, a terraced skyscraper that will be the city’s third tallest. Work will also begin soon on her writhing Folsom Bay Tower in San Francisco.

But shimmering high-rises like these are more likely to be splashed across chamber-of-commerce branding campaigns than anything else. After all, luxury skyscrapers aren’t exactly tools to bail cities out of acute problems like housing shortages. As Gang reasons, “There’s only going to be an elite percentage of people that can live in those super tall buildings.”

To get a better picture of tall-building typologies that can offer more in Chicago, you have to look down—in terms of height and on a map—to City Hyde Park on the South Side. This 180-unit, 14-story rental-apartment building in the Hyde Park neighborhood cost a relatively modest $82 million. Its neighborly scale and unremarkable budget are likely to tell you more about the broad future of urban living than any cloud piercer uptown. “This is how we have to do housing to house everyone,” Gang says of tall residential buildings like this. “They are the DNA of the city.”