Hay Festival Segovia highlight: Jeanne Gang, Time magazine’s most influential architect of 2019

Hay Festival Segovia, Spain’s largest ideas event, will be held for the 14th year in the central Spanish city, with IE University, thanks to the support of the IE Foundation, one of the main collaborators and academic partner. One of the many highlights of this year’s edition, which will take place between September 20 and September 22, will be the presence of architect Jeanne Gang, the founding principal of architecture and urbanism practice Studio Gang and the only architect on Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019.

Architect and Pritzker Prize 2010 Kazuyo Sejima with students of the Bachelor in Architecture during Hay Festival 2018

Once again, architecture will play a leading role in the Hay Festival Segovia. One of the main events this year will be a conversation between Gang and Martha Thorne, the Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design, providing a unique opportunity to get to know one of the world’s leading architects today. “I would like to ask her about the next step for architecture and how architects can become leaders. She seems to be redefining the scope for architects and knows where architecture should be going”, explains Martha Thorne. For the Dean, having Gang at IE University’s Segovia campus is an enormous privilege, adding she admires the architect because “she always pushes the limits beyond the expected based on research and testing”. A good example of Gang’s approach is the Aqua Tower in Chicago, which uniquely uses terraces to create microclimates through solar shading and establish a vibrant vertical community on in the façade of the 82-floor mixed-use residential building.

2019 was a banner year for Gang. In January, she announced her first project in France, a new Center for the University of Chicago in Paris. Then, in March, she was selected as the lead architect of the new Global Terminal and Concourse at O’Hare International Airport. At 2.2 million square feet, it will be her largest project to date. These add to her already-impressive portfolio of ongoing cultural and civic projects across the Americas, which include an expansion of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, a new campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and the new United States Embassy in Brazil. Solar Carve, her first ground-up project in New York City, will complete this Summer.

Gang defines herself as a “relationship builder”, focusing her work on strengthening connections individuals, their communities, and their environment. In addition, Gang is an inspiration for female architects and women in related professions. IE University students and those attending the Hay Festival Segovia this September will have the opportunity to meet the architect and to ask about her projects, her profession and her vision of the role of architecture in today’s society.

More information here.