The Art of Architectural Grafting

Architect Jeanne Gang explores how the horticultural practice of grafting can inspire a fresh paradigm for sustainable design.

In this book, Jeanne Gang, one of America's most distinguished contemporary architects, proposes applying the plant cultivation technique of grafting to architecture and urban design as a way of rethinking adaptive reuse and combatting climate change. Grafting is the process of connecting two separate living plantsone old and one newso they can grow and thrive as one. This ancient practice continues to be performed today in search of more fruitful, palatable, and resilient varieties of plants.

Grafting is also a useful paradigm for how architecture can address climate change on a broadly impactful scale by reusing and expanding older structures. Addressing both the environmental and cultural value of reuse, Gang shows how the concept of grafting can inform architecture across many scales, provoking the imagination and shaping tectonic, programmatic, formal, and regenerative adaptations.

Awarded as Architecture Book of the Year 2024 in the category «Technical» and Architectural Book of the Year 2025.

• Jeanne Gang is one of the most distinguished contemporary architects in the United States
• Gang's new programmatic book points the way towards an architecture that responds more fully and effectively to climate change
• Highlights that the ancient plant-cultivation technique of grafting is also a highly useful model for architecture and urban design

• Demonstrates Gang's approach through concrete projects, illustrated with previously unpublished images, plans, and diagrams

  Autorentext

  Jeanne Gang is an American architect and founder and leader of Studio Gang, an architecture and design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Gang was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower in Chicago, the tallest woman-designed building in the world at the time of completion in 2009 and since surpassed by the nearby St. Regis (Vista Tower), also of her design.

  Zusammenfassung
  How can architecture respond effectively to climate change? Distinguished American architect Jeanne Gang proposes to apply the ancient plant-cultivation technique of grafting to the construction of buildings.