Comments on: Looking for a Jeanne Gang quote

Question: Looking for a Jeanne Gang quote

dw — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:47:33 -0800

I'm looking for a quote by architect Jeanne Gang I read in an article about her last year, and my Google-fu is failing me. Help me, hivemind.

The quote goes something like:

I only like to design things that can be built. When you don't, you design a lot of wild ideas that can't be built. And that's not what I want to do.

That's roughly what I remember, but it's not exact. I cannot find the quote at all. I thought it was in the NY Times, but I can't find a match there. I seem to remember it was in a newspaper, and the article was published around when she was awarded a MacArthur last year. The article, as I recall, talked about Gang being a female architect in a male-dominated field and her design of the Aqua Tower in Chicago. The quote is in one of the final paragraphs.

I need to make a point in a presentation on design about the balance between aspirational design and practical design. But my Google-fu has come up with nothing. Maybe someone else can?

By: (alice)

(alice) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:58:15 -0800

In this New Yorker article she says, "But when you can design anything you want without actually having to make it, you do wild things that can't work. And that's not what I want to do."

By: dw

dw — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:00:10 -0800

That's it. Thanks so much (alice)!

By: LionIndex

LionIndex — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:00:27 -0800

I think there was actually a post on the blue about her a year or so ago that might somehow link that same article. And here it is. The quote you're looking for, the same listed by (alice) is a pull quote on the post.