A meandering urban flow lies at the heart of BIG's master plan for Pittsburgh, which is appropriate since the plan's primary function is to connect the Hill District to the city's downtown core. Collaborating with West 8 (landscape architecture) and Atelier Ten (sustainability), BIG's master plan includes 1.2 million square feet of residential space and 1.25 million square feet of office, retail, and hotel space.
As Bjarke Ingels explained, "The masterplan for the Lower Hill District is created by supplementing the existing street grid with a new network of parks and paths shaped to optimize the sloping hill side for human accessibility for all generations. The paths are turned and twisted to always find a gentle sloping path leading pedestrians and bicyclists comfortably up and down the hillside. The resulting urban fabric combines a green network of effortless circulation with a quirky character reminiscent of a historical downtown."
In an attempt to incorporate the aesthetics of the region's Allegheny landscape, West 8's public realm design features granite outcroppings. The estimated development cost for the plan is $500 million dollars, and has a start date of 2016.
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Rust belt cities are still in the process of shedding some parochial outmoded ways of operating as well has all of the baggage left over from years of decay and decline. Its very interesting to see architecture that we associate with places like Copenhagen or Amsterdam in Cleveland and to suddenly imagine if places like Pittsburgh or Buffalo or Cleveland can really become attractive and nimble global cities.
Hopefully they can get more quality architects and avoid more boondoggles by Lou Astorino and his ilk.
Not bad, but there's not much poetry here. Looks like it came from the formula.... Pyramid roof garden + park space. But is the formula good?
not a mention of the upper hill...
I feel sorry for Pittsburg if they fall for this squiggly housing project. What Pittsburg needs is repair to its torn urban fabric, not some landscape architecture graffiti.
Frank Lloyd Wright said Pittsburgh couldn't be fixed and should have been razed, but that was FLW, what did he know....
Nate HB, the following qoute starts with describing the research phase and the formulation and continues - -"When public relations become predominant, there is less time for introspection, reflection, and elaboration, and so a loss in content. Or better, the content remains the same, but the ideal tension that keeps it together is no longer there. Fame is not dangerous in itself. It is simply a waste of time; you are absorbed by other things. It becomes more about supervision than invention."- Arduino Cantfora (Log 35, p.86)
what is actually being built, and by whom? is this a plan commissioned by the city to guide future development, or this a plan being seriously proposed by a team of developers?
if its the former, the buildings can be regarded as placeholders for whatever the actual developer will want to build. civic masterplans tend to turn more banal in realization (see WTC site for example). I guess the main focus is this series of terraced plazas and bike paths, which seems nice. But that one stumpy building at the low end (south?) seems to be blocking the flow of the space.
I'm not familiar with Pittsburg but I'd be surprised if this site can be developed entirely without accomodation for cars as the renderings suggest. Is all the parking and road access underground?
FLW hated cities, so no he knew next to nothing about how they worked. Just look at Broadacre city. As a designer, he was a genius. Pittsburg actually has some wonderful areas, but they are all cut off of each other making a long stroll through the city very unpleasant. I hope that beautiful city catches a break, but this plan ain't it.
what a thoughtless project.
Its an early rendering of a masterplan. Do you think its a little early to judge it so harshly? Oh, but its BIG, the kardashian of Architecture, so I suppose its ok then.
^ Im judging what I see. Its organized like every office park in sprawlville USA.
jla-x, I don't see what you're seeing. I don't see parking lots or megablocks. I see a street grid, public space, semi public courtyards, pedestrian paths, roof gardens. I also see buildings that acknowledge the street grid and allow for first floor retail/public programming.
those inages are black white 3d's over Clay Vray?
The plan as presently proposed ignores much of the history and context of the lower hill. The meander is centered on Wylie, is a local street at best. As you travel east, or plan left, the housing stock varies greatly and remains mostly residential in quality. Bedford, to the north is of Wylie essentially dead ends.
Centre ave, to the south is far more connected to the fabric of the entire hill and extends past the hill into neighborhoods adjacent to Pitt(sburgh) University and Carnegie Mellon. The new arena for the Penguins is also located on Centre and Dusquene University is just to the south. Historically speaking, Centre was the corridor that connected diverse neighborhoods and commercial districts together (pre Robert Moses and the igloo). The location of the neighborhood plazas (interalized and localized retail opportunities) does little to connect to anything but the small amount of residential and commercial uses specific to the project.
In some respects it repeats previous mistakes made since the highway bypass was put in place. Small gestures that look internally instead of making large connections across the urban fabric.
Mario should have been more sensitive.
At its core it is a modernist approach to urbanism...tabula rasa...radiant cityesque...overall, what is missing from the work of many of the "top players" is a contextual rigor. I guess this is a symptom of global architecture, but more of a deep study of context that was apparent in the work of enrique Mirallas, james corner, etc...is greatly needed...imo, BIG is a building stylist at best. Their work seems like it is designed from a birds eye mentality...Good designers, especially urban designers, need to design from a user mentality...That is also why the diagrams annoy me...as if designed by a god looking down on the city...egotecture with little sensitivity to the experiance of the user...its not about how to move ants through space...circulation diagrams and such...but the actual life it will have...the way it will become an integral part of the set for the drama of life....That imo is not strong in their work...It bores me as much as any stripmall.
i don't want to bust our bruh Bjarke's balls, he's rolliing in the loot,
he owns a multi-million dollar condo in DUMBO (i actually do know your address bjarkey baby, not that I care, but people tell me this shit like I should know, I don't want to know..I swear)
and you pay most your empooyees shit! go you! you Danish Prince!
and no he doesn't live in this photo, best thing I came up with in google search
true story...client taking photos of me with disposable cameras and all kinds of Italian shit...seriously - I just want to be an architect....gave him a Carlo Scarpa book in the end (end meaning - stupid clueless white guy wants to only be an architect)
why does this shit always have to get complicated?!!
yeah I got a job offer for $100k for 2-3 hrs a week and all my homies in the industry are suspciuous, take your time and read this sirs, I posted it and please reconsider me appropriately...i will owe no one nothing.
i just want to be an architect.
wait, was that about Bjarkey baby, pitt, or being an architect? we expect better BIG
jla-x, You are overstating the Tabula Rasa charge, which is at this point such a dated cliche po-mo accusation, because we are now in 2015 and we have seen so many examples of terribly patronizing and sentimental "contextual" and critical-regionalist projects. We see this in the Crawford square apartments north-east of the site and throughout the lower-hill area.
The ego charge is a kind of weapon used against architects who diagram but not against architects who sketch and fetishize the mysterious magic of hand drawing, curiously. Again, I think that this is because of nostalgia, and a generational resistance to changing practices around urbanism
Marc,
This proposal doesn't seem entirely tabula rasa (even though the site is currently a giant empty lot) or entirely critical regionalist. Its neither like the very austere modernist Washington Plaza Aparments nor like the faux-historic Crawford Square apartments. It responds to its context while departing from the New Urbanist impulse to imitate older architectural styles. To me, this makes a lot of sense. The site is sandwiched between very different types of urbanism. BIG's proposal seems to acknowledge its role as a transitional zone that reconciles the differences in scale and and in texture. BIG isn't going to be able to remove highways and repair those very bleak and wide thoroughfares. That would far outside of their scope, it seems.
FLW's qoute here
to Davvid's last point, and man I tried to be a threadkill ;) you sure love BIG
I never said it's tabula rasa, nor did I suggest that "new urbanist" proposals are the solution. This is demonstrated by their failure of Crawford Square. The most recent new urbanist construction on the upper hill is not complete enough to determine it's long term impact on the city. Washington Plaza is a ghost of an earlier time along Centre -pre Consol- when that that block was "tall." It's not the most attractive building, but it made sense back then. Oddly enough, it also marked the edge of downtown development and the transition into the hill.
I did say it's improperly grounded.
With respect to massing, the plan does transition from the downtown district into the poorly redeveloped areas of the lower hill (the failed new urbanism of Crawford Square- the 1st time I ever saw picket fences in the city core), but it pays no attention to how the street grid works. A proposal that would benefit immediate resident to the east, the new arena, the commercial and Duquene districts to the south, the upper hill not to mention neighborhoods to further to the east around Pitt/CMU and thus Pittsburgh as a city would face Centre ave and not center on Wylie.
For reference, Centre narrows immediately after the site, but still has commercial uses. I see no reason why the street cannot give way to a pedestrian boulevard along this site. I agree the highway will never go away, but that is all the more reason to make connections to the cityat multiple scales and not just one mediocre apartment complex.
If they can pull off another US steel or Alcoa building- but in contemporary terms, more power to them. But take advantage of the street as a system, not just as a boundary to determine the property line for the F.A.R.
Davvid, it has nothing to do with nostalgia, it has to do with creating a sense of place, and creating regionally appropriate buildings.
What is a regionally appropriate building for Pittsburgh? Its not as though BIG is proposing yurts or igloos.
What a cluster fuck that we both despise the tabula rasa of the modernists yet any attempt to be contextual in the way people might recognize is deemed nostalgic and sentimental.
How long will it take to get over this modernist brainwashing?
First of all, let's remember that Pittsburgh really is a modern city (note: I'm not confusing this with modernism). Yes, the core of the downtown is old and at times feels gothic- especially the old prison, but the waterfront did not mature until the army core of engineers decided to directly address flooding in the lower Mississippi (how's that for regional context) starting in the 20's.
Even prior to the continuing de-industrilization of the water front, urban form was a negotiation of hydrology and topography. So if you look at the core of the city, the are some incredibly narrow streets that are bisected by a series of wider streets that connect the core to parts east. This north/south vs. east west logic carries through much of that part of the city. If were are going to speak of context, that something that should be capitalized.
That is not to say the city needs more gothic references. The new jail facing the Allegheny is an example as to why this should be avoided, although I like that building. But some of the most notable buildings in Pittsburgh acknowledge a historic relationship to construction and architecture. The US steel building was made with corten and is a handsome building- I think they are to be a new tenant of the igloo site. The Alcoa building used aluminum paneling with patterning, and PPG (say what you like, but the plaza space works well with the surrounding buildings) is an interesting connection between glass and the cathedral of learning on the Pitt campus (an interesting hybrid building which modernizes gothic even more). The igloo, despite all it's troubles, was meant to a true civic gesture opening up to the downtown. In practice this rarely happened and I believe the last time was for a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. But it was a structural feat at the time. The Moses plan had already started to separate the hill form the downtown.
I could go on about how topography and proximity to the water determined land uses, values and density. But I think it's not a question of building style as a thing unto itself, but really looking at the fabric of the city and understanding the circulation patterns in addition to looking at some of the significant buildings that make intentional nods to the context and the client that will make this
Interesting points made in the Pittsburgh City paper.
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