The Remaking Cities Institute’s research and programming on resilient industrial regions incorporates an approach to adaptive reuse and urban projects with broad-ranging environmental, social, and urban design objectives.
In his recently published article, “Adapting Preservation: Lessons Learned from Challenges and Opportunities in Two Large-Scale Pittsburgh Projects,” in PER: Preservation Education & Research 13/2021 (University of Minnesota Press), RCI Director Ray Gastil looks at two recent adaptive reuse projects, Mill 19 at Hazelwood Green and the Produce Terminal in the Strip. He examines how these two large-scale, industrial-era buildings, one 1200-feet-long, the other more than 1500, have been remade to fit programs to contribute to thriving, urban environments. Both the mill and the terminal pose a fundamental issue for balancing urbanism and preservation, informing the development of improved models for an expanded, adaptive preservation response to respecting history while meeting sustainable urbanism imperatives.
Gastil adds, “these projects preserve the extraordinary scale of these building, one a warehouse and auction hall, the other first a munitions factory and then used for steel and storage, one in the Strip District, the other on a brownfield site in Hazelwood. The terminal largely preserves the structure and cladding, though changing its edge to the street, while the other keeps the structure, using it as an armature for new, smaller buildings, a vast solar array, and a visible reminder of how the site was used for more than a century. There may be different perspectives on their success, but both are determined to sustain their unpretentiously sublime scale and at the same time have the types of passages, openings, and connectivity of thriving urban places.” He adds that “while it seems obvious to architects and urbanists that we make better places with form and program that allow for open, interactive structures, a large part of our commercial building underway in North America is still basically sealed boxes by the highway. Adaptive preservation can be a critical part of changing that direction.”
In related news, Carter, editor and contributing author of Remaking Post-Industrial Cities: Lessons from North America and Europe (Routledge) has turned his attention to smaller post-industrial communities as well, publishing “Remaking Small Post-Industrial Towns” in PER: Preservation Education & Research 13/2021 (University of Minnesota Press). Pittsburgh region communities in the article include McKees Rocks, Millvale, Etna, and Sharpsburg. Carter concludes that “New lessons have come out of this research. In addition to civic pride of the people (their strongest asset), these four small post-industrial towns, and others like them, have three additional strengths on which to capitalize: existing infrastructure and historic fabric, abundant fresh water, and their location within a regional conurbation.”