Risk And Reward  Innovative Designs Build A Young Architect's
Reputation  November 09, 2003|By James Ylisela Jr. James Ylisela
Jr. is a frequent contributor to the Magazine.  Jeanne Gang is
having trouble with stone.  We're climbing through the
unfinished floors of her building-in-the-making, a program
center for the Chinese American Service League, when Gang's cell
phone rings. It seems the stonemason she's hired for an exhibit
at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., can't hone
the stone the way she wants it and still meet the deadline.
Gang is one of four architects picked to demonstrate innovative
uses of building materials, and she's creating a marble curtain
from 619 pieces of stone connected like a jigsaw puzzle.
Building with stone typically relies on compression, with each
section supporting those resting upon it, and Gang's design
shows that thinly cut stone, hanging in tension and reinforced
with woven glass fiber, can bear substantial weight.  Honing the
stone makes it more translucen