Time magazine has just released its list of the 100 most influential people in 2019, and it includes Jeanne Gang—the only architect on this year’s Time 100 list.

Gang, the founder of architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang, has long been a celebrated figure in American architecture, having won the 2011 MacArthur “Genius Grant,” the 2017 Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award, and the 2017 Marcus Prize for Architecture for her “trajectory to greatness.”

In the 2019 Time 100 list, Gang is listed as one of the “titans,” a category that names individuals at the top of their respective fields and includes the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and LeBron James. In recent years, Time has singled out one architect every year to honor in its annual list. Previous Time 100 lists have included Elizabeth Diller, David Adjaye, and Bjarke Ingels.

“Jeanne Gang has the WOW factor,” writes award-winning actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, who nominated Gang to the Time 100. “Her stunning Aqua, in Chicago, is the tallest building ever built by a woman. Now she’s building an even taller one. Yet, for Jeanne, architecture is not just a wondrous object. It’s a catalyst for change.”

Gang impressed Smith and the Time 100 jury with her interdisciplinary and research-driven approach to design of all scales—from skyscrapers to neighborhood planning—and her focus on sustainability and community building. As stated in her TED Talk at TEDWomen 2016, Gang sees herself as a “relationship builder”—and the role of an architect as a problem solver for the world’s pressing issues—in a practice she calls “actionable idealism.”

One such example of this practice is the Polis Station, an ongoing civic research project that seeks to improve Chicago police-community relations through improved architectural design. A recently completed phase of the plan is a basketball half-court that Studio Gang built on an underutilized area of the police parking lot in North Lawndale’s 10th District Police Station. The project has become so popular that the firm is currently expanding the site into a full court and park.

“Referring to the growing socioeconomic divides in our cities, Jeanne has warned her profession against ‘sorting ourselves into architects of the rich and architects of the poor,’ and focuses instead on discovering ‘new possibilities for the discipline and beyond,’” adds Smith. “And it all started with playing in the dirt and making ice castles. Wow.”

Headquartered in Chicago, Studio Gang has offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. The firm’s ongoing projects include an extension for Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History, a new United States Embassy in Brasília, and skyscrapers in Toronto and Amsterdam.

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