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Pittsburghers are famous (infamous?) for constantly referring to places — landmarks, companies, buildings — that aren’t there anymore. We have a keen collective memory of what has come and gone in our built environment – but what about what comes next? That’s a question husband-and-wife team Bea Spolidoro and Eric Fisher, principal architects at Fisher ARCHitecture, set out to address late last month.
On a recent wintry evening in the historic Allegheny Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club in Downtown Pittsburgh — a three-story miniature bit of Cambridge, Massachusetts, tucked in amongst the city’s towering odes to its metallurgical past — a group of about 80 people gathered to hear Spolidoro and Fisher’s thoughts.
The couple outlined what they call “an architecture of trust.” According to Fisher, this means that “architects’ designs must foster connections between people, place and purpose. Built projects must become visual representations of their designers’ integrity and credibility.”
Spolidoro, a native of Milan, Italy, said, “fundamentally, Pittsburgh is a European city.” She pointed to the extirpation of Indigenous peoples by the French and British, and the eventual waves of European immigration as all having left their mark on the city’s structure.
However, despite its centuries of European influence, the city lacks something many European cities can boast: “a stronger emphasis on historical context, intricate craftsmanship, attention to detail and integration with the surrounding environment than the United States,” Spolidoro said. “As well, there is a greater focus [in Europe] on preserving older buildings. The result is often a more visually appealing and culturally rich cityscape.”
Fisher points to a unique factor in Pittsburgh’s favor: environmental stability.
“Pittsburgh is likely to be much better off than many other cities as climate change devastates the globe over the coming decades,” he said. “Pittsburgh is far from the hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and droughts that are wreaking havoc elsewhere.”
The displacement brought on by climate change, while leading to increased pressure on the city’s housing and infrastructure, “will also create new opportunities for economic growth and innovation, with a greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility,” according to Fisher. He highlighted a statistic from the World Bank and the United Nations: “by 2050, cities will be home to an additional 2.5 billion people, with two out of every three people living in urban areas.”
Fisher and Spolidoro both acknowledged the role architects have in meeting the community’s needs when shaping the future of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods – especially those surrounding the affordable housing crisis, rising energy costs and climate change.
“Architects bear profound responsibility for ensuring that these plans respond organically from the bottom up to address citizens’ direct needs and concerns,” Fisher said. “They are the ones who will determine the way Pittsburgh will look in the future because they are the ones who will draw every line of the drawings that will be translated into tomorrow’s forms.”
Spolidoro points to the changing identity of the city that, in turn, affects the types of buildings that are being built.
“Today, Pittsburgh is a liminal place: Pittsburgh occupies a space in its ‘uncanny valley’ that feels in between its industrial past and its rapidly developing, tech-focused future,” she said. “Elements of both eras are visibly present, creating a unique blend of old and new. This juxtaposition can evoke either feelings of sadness, nostalgia and unease, or their opposite, generating feelings of comfort and resolution, depending on where you look.”
Gentrification of older, tight-knit working class neighborhoods such as Lawrenceville, Bloomfield and the South Side, bear this liminality out.
One of Fisher ARCHitecture’s own projects is a microcosm of the push and pull between old and new: the Emerald Art Glass House mixes the use of the company’s existing 20th-century warehouse building with a contemporary residence cantilevered over it, responding to both the wishes of the client and the character of the neighborhood.
Spolidoro and Fisher called for a more thoughtful design process to help Pittsburgh avoid the “cut-and-paste” look of boxy, midsize residential buildings that has plagued cities such as Seattle and Denver.
The couple points to the city’s Comprehensive Planning Process document, which states “Before we look to the future, we need to acknowledge our past, from the legacy of heavy industry to the heavy-handed government policies that disrupted neighborhoods and displaced residents and contributed to the degradation of the region’s air, soil and water.”
In addition to architectural design challenges, transportation is another major challenge for Pittsburgh, said Fisher.
“I personally think that automobiles will be far less prominent 15 years from now than they are now,” Fisher said. A Shadyside native, he has what seems to be a lifelong desire for a more human-centric approach to transportation. “I’ve been dreaming of making [Walnut Street] a pedestrian promenade since I was 5 years old growing up in the neighborhood,” he told the crowd.
In the end, the “architecture of trust” isn’t about steel and glass but about people and their relationship to places.
“Change begins with trust — trust in new ideas, trust in collaborative processes and trust in the transformative power of architecture,” Spolidoro said. “Architects’ ability to achieve the public’s trust in the future will be dependent on their ability to create quality work. Then, they will be able to more effectively educate and empower the public to envision alternative futures.”
Melanie Linn Gutowski is a freelance writer and conservation educator and can be reached at melanielinngutowski@gmail.com.
