architecture

Roy Engelbrecht: City Life

“Pull out a camera and all of a sudden, strange things happen,” laughs Roy Engelbrecht. For more than 50 years, Engelbrecht has specialized in architectural and landscape photography and every picture, as they say, tells a story. Engelbrecht remembers them all, starting with the day his best friend gave him a box camera for his …

Roy Engelbrecht: City Life Read More »

A Bauhaus Masterpiece

Is a house private or public? Like any compelling opposites, each really only exists with measured dollops of the other. Choices of how to eat, sleep, bathe and relax are very private. Yet the artistic movements or common practices inflecting those selections are very public—from publications and exhibitions to the sprawling possibilities of the design …

A Bauhaus Masterpiece Read More »

Mill 19: A Magnificent Blend of Past and Future in Hazelwood

At an early September opening for Mill 19, the new robotics research incubator and office space in Hazelwood’s former LTV Steel site, a robotic arm participated with scientists and dignitaries to help cut the ribbon in the voluminous lab space with a high-tech flourish. Tenants include Carnegie Mellon’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative and the affiliated nonprofit …

Mill 19: A Magnificent Blend of Past and Future in Hazelwood Read More »

The New MuseumLab: Past Transformed for Future

At nearly 130 years old, the building is an antique, but the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, known casually as the Carnegie Library of the North Side, was built to look centuries old from the start. Following the Romanesque Revival style of H.H. Richardson’s recent Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail, cut stone, rhythmic arches and …

The New MuseumLab: Past Transformed for Future Read More »

Bringing Back Pittsburgh’s Steps

Along Schenley Drive in Oakland, the Frick Fine Arts building looks like a Renaissance villa, well suited to the grandeur of the adjacent Carnegie Museums and Library in the cultural part of Oakland. At the parking lot in back, though, you find the public steps down to Joncaire Street, a descent of 130-some treads into …

Bringing Back Pittsburgh’s Steps Read More »

Frick Environmental Center Achieves Living Building Challenge Status

Great architecture should be built for the ages. Imposing piles, whether in stone or steel, are supposed to indicate heroic resistance to the ravages of the elements as both practicality and art. And yet in the era of the environmental movement, some portion of this equation has been inverted. We now ask, what is the …

Frick Environmental Center Achieves Living Building Challenge Status Read More »

Leading Lines

The photography of Emmanuel Panagiotakis reveals a love of light and form. With technical intricacy, he captures images that transform spaces. Panagiotakis is a native of Chios, Greece, but has called Pittsburgh home for almost 30 years. His photography takes him all over the world, yet it’s the beauty of his adopted city that never …

Leading Lines Read More »

The Fate of a Prison

For a sprawling building in an ambitious Romanesque style on a conspicuous riverfront site, Western Penitentiary has spent most of its life in architectural obscurity. After an auspicious start, it fell quickly from prominence. Now, it may soon fall to the wrecking ball. Begun in 1879 in Woods Run along the Ohio River and partially …

The Fate of a Prison Read More »

Looking at Lubetz

Stand at the top of the angles stairs in the entry to the Squirrel Hill Library, and you are cantilevered out and over Forbes Avenue, beyond the facades of surrounding buildings. The way the building creases and folds here, you can see outside and back in at the same time. Go past the free-standing elevator …

Looking at Lubetz Read More »

The Unconventional Pays Off

Sometimes a building aims to look as if it has always been there. Frequently, architects match the brick of the surrounding neighborhood and use slightly modernized versions of traditional details to make a structure appear that it’s been there longer than it has. This is not such a bad thing. Buildings end up being agreeable …

The Unconventional Pays Off Read More »

A Monument Then and Now

Did the demolition of the greenfield (really the Beechwood Boulevard) Bridge feel like the passing of an era? The urbane, concrete arch span of 1923 was crumbling far too ominously above the speeding traffic of the Parkway East to be able to stay in place, so it was ceremoniously demolished. A replacement will be completed …

A Monument Then and Now Read More »

The Frank House: A Bauhaus Beauty

At a glance, the buff-colored residence nestled among the more traditional homes on Woodland Road seems an oddity, an almost institutional-looking structure resplendent in its obscurity. The mature trees that soften its façade testify to the fact that the home has stood on its spot for many years—70, to be exact—yet few have noticed. Until …

The Frank House: A Bauhaus Beauty Read More »

Top
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...
Responsive Menu
Add more content here...