Day 01 Reviews @CMU

While I was in Pittsburgh I had the pleasure of taking part in some student reviews at @cmusoa. Day one was Tommy Yang's second year studio 'Once Upon A Pittsburgh'.

'...where apparatus of storytelling is mobilized — towards resisting the erasure of identity, history, and existence.'

The studio views architecture as the thing which frames human life and its stories, so of course lots we find interesting. It views the stories we tell are the things which help us empathize, imagine, see another perspective; these narratives are a means of surviving, particularly for minority and marginalised communities.

The studio ‘explores how stories, myths, cinematography, animation, mapping, comics, and design can build an argument for an architecture for and of the people’ and aims to create ‘socio-ecologically resoluted, politically charged, geographically situated, and culturally woven architectural propositions.’

The context of Pittsburgh is a fascinating one (more to come on that) – historically its geographical topography has been mirrored in the organisation of the city and its architectural typologies, from the former steel warehouses which once lined the waterfront to the timber constructed houses which hug the dramatic hill gradients, with their characteristic porches, becoming ever grander as once rises out of the once smog filled river basin.

The student’s response to the challenge set by the context and the studio was incredibly rich, from animae to documentary, the student’s engaged with condition of contemporary Pittsburgh, with imagination and dexterity.