"In her new book, The Art of Architectural Grafting, Jeanne Gang argues that architects must do more than pay lip service when it comes to sustainable design. Instead of flashy, surface-level interventions like adorning building exteriors with green walls, the acclaimed architect and Surface cover star urges her peers to implement more impactful carbon-reducing strategies such as forgoing the demolition of buildings and increasing existing buildings’ intensity of use. To demonstrate, she brings readers into her garden."

Surface

"Stitching, splicing, and nimble joining abound in Jeanne Gang’s The Art of Architectural Grafting. This slim, handsomely produced book with an impossibly long subtitle is one part horticultural field guide, one part personal journal, and one part treatise on a design philosophy rooted in agriculture, whereby the old is melded with the new to become something wholly different."

Architectural Record

"In Gang’s hands, what could have been a laboured analogy is engagingly explored, enhanced by personal remembrances and a beautiful book design."

The RIBA Journal

"The latest book on Studio Gang, the Chicago studio headed by Jeanne Gang, is a departure from the norm, not only in its relatively petit size, but in the way it acts as a manifesto and manual for a particular approach to architecture — grafting — that applies an agricultural technique to the design of buildings and cities. A focus on the reuse and extension of existing buildings via grafting is presented in numerous, wide-ranging texts and the documentation of a few Studio Gang projects, most notably the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Beloit College Powerhouse, and the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History."

World-Architects

"The Art of Architectural Grafting could be described as a gentle manifesto: It contains theory, history, work by Gang’s students, built projects, unrealized case studies, and personal reflections. Beginning from the horticultural practice of grafting, which involves taking a scion cut from one plant and growing it atop a rootstock from a separate plant, Gang goes on to deliver the ten points of the architect-grafter’s credo and share how the idea is put to work throughout Studio Gang’s portfolio. The publication also shines a light on what we could do with the background buildings that largely comprise American cities."

The Architect's Newspaper

"In this curious book, informed by environmental concerns to extend (rather than raze) existing buildings and reuse urban sites, she makes an extended metaphor of the horticulture practice of grafting—to the extent of taking GSD students to Wellesley’s botanical garden to practice on saplings. New Yorkers will know how Studio Gang practices these principles from the insertion of the Gilder Center into the American Museum of Natural History complex."

Harvard Magazine

"Process, as described in sketches and models, writing, and research take on greater importance instead. For The Art of Architectural Grafting, released by Park Books in April in English and French editions, the cover's lengthy title filling the cover in an old-timey way makes it clear this is not your typical monograph. 
Grafting is a timely book because. . . It is well known now that buildings greatly contribute to carbon emissions and global warming, both in their construction/demolition and operation, so the most responsible tactic for architects is to reuse old buildings and extend their lifespans"

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

"...it’s important to see a leader of the architecture world come down so firmly in favour of self-effacement, economy and efficiency. These ideas need to become unavoidable."

The Globe and Mail