Dunmoyle
The owners of a Federal Style Squirrel Hill home asked us to design a small addition for their green backyard court. We precisely preserved their existing home and then designed new spaces that complemented it in unexpected ways.
Architects do not create the world as we design. We respond to it. Yet despite the fact that our designs become richer as they begin to express the conditions of their surroundings, more often than not new Pittsburgh buildings relate only to themselves. We worked very hard on Dunmoyle to preserve the courtyard space as we added building area. Because you can inhabit the roof, the new addition with its carefully designed glass ceiling expands the interior living space without eliminating any precious outdoor area.
Read More >Old Meets New
We often talk about creating an architecture where “Old Meets New”, one where old and new buildings can coexist like happy neighbors. You may have heard us use the word, “palimpsest”, which refers to a parchment on which partially erased previously written layers are still visible. This type of architecture is like a palimpsest because one can read the architecture as a series of layers. First, a owner builds one thing, and then another. “Old meets New” architecture has the virtue of exhibiting the fourth dimension of time in addition to the three dimensions we normally experience. It’s cool stuff for sure.
During our summers, Bea and I are taking a deep dive into the NEW part of “Old meets New”: Progressive, modern buildings are going up in every European city despite the historic nature of their city centers. It is impossible not to imagine how Pittsburgh could use European examples as it moves ahead, preserving the past while embracing innovation and reinvention. Bea and I feel it is possible to respect old buildings while at the same time designing new buildings with technologies, aesthetics, and green building techniques that respond to the way we live NOW.
These are not contradictory concepts. It is possible to be, as one Pittsburgh writer described us, “unabashed Modernists” AND still be rigorous preservationists.
