Introduction: What is “Timeless Architecture”
Our society is obsessed with the passing of time: It’s always passing too fast or too slow: Sometimes we wish it would stop, other times we want it to rush ahead. Borrowing from Jerry Seinfeld’s observation that OTHER people are always driving too fast—and they are maniacs!—or too slow—and they are idiots!—perception of time is always very personal.
When it comes to architecture, some people are naturally drawn to old buildings with centuries of history. Others express awe at new, futuristic-looking structures. Yet, labelling buildings as either “old” or “new” is reductive:
Young people are thought of as too young to understand or contribute. Old people are thought of as either behind the times or unable to adapt. Young ideas are trends. Old ideas are outdated. New music is shallow. Old music is boring. Just as we shouldn’t judge people on the basis of their age, so too should we look more broadly at what makes a building successful and why some architecture appeals to a wider audience regardless of its age.
In other words, how can architecture be “Timeless”? Europe provides strong examples of “timeless architecture”. The best European architects, whether they lived centuries ago or may perhaps be lecturing in another city at this very moment, have created designs that are deeply rooted in the life of a place. These designers have created environments that feel alive today yet are connected to generations past. Our opinion is that architects here in Pittsburgh should view the past as a design resource, rather than as an enemy, even as—and this is an important point—they design in styles compatible with their times.
1. Our Fair City
a) Pittsburgh is Awesome!
European examples are particularly relevant as we consider Pittsburgh’s future because, fundamentally, Pittsburgh is a European city. Pittsburgh possesses an old-world, European balance. It is a perfect combination of a big city and a small town. The city feels rooted yet dynamic. Our region has a strong working-class history similar to in Europe; yet it’s also a cultural hub.
It is a place where you feel the different elements of city life, history, and nature woven into the city’s structure. It has old steel and new tech, it possesses both a lush natural environment and extended urban development, and it combines hills with rivers. Pittsburgh has dense urban areas with greenspaces, and it has diverse communities that resemble neighborhoods in Prague or Rome.
b) It could be better
Yet Pittsburgh could be much better. Like most cities, our urban core is surrounded by a huge sea of oversized development homes constructed with suspect quality. And though organizations like the AIA regularly recognize Pittsburgh’s best new designs, ninety percent of all new Pittsburgh designs are utilitarian at best, featuring plain, boxy shapes, minimal decoration, and cheap materials. They create environments that feel dull and even depressing, especially when repeated in block after block of mass housing.
It doesn’t have to be this way! Next we will talk about qualities that excellent designs possess, and why you are more likely to see these examples in Europe .
2. An Archeological Lens
What do archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, archivists, and paleontologists have in common? Each group sifts through layers of the past to uncover hidden patterns and reveal stories that can inform our present.
Whether they be traditionalists or perhaps Elvis-loving pop culture enthusiasts who idealize so-called “golden” past times, these professionals must approach their subjects critically, carefully reading layers of information to uncover genuine insights regarding their topic of study.
Like it or not, AI does the same: Trained on historical data—books, websites, and articles—it’s constantly looking at the past to generate responses.
Strong architects design similarly, responding thoughtfully to the infinite amounts of unfiltered information inherent to every project site. Similar to rowers who move ahead while facing backwards, skilled architects move into the future with eyes firmly fixed on the past. Propelled by memories, an experienced architect never tries to design a project “from scratch”
Europe’s dense historical legacy, museums, and long philosophical tradition have long shaped European attitudes. To perhaps overgeneralize, Americans have sought solutions through individual rights, reform, and optimism that problems can be solved by fixing systems or, ahem, empowering certain individuals. Europeans, on the other hand, are more inclined to emphasize structures of power, ideology, and history. So it comes as no surprise that European architects have long considered history as they design.
Creating timeless architecture requires architects to understand the full breadth of their sites’ history in order to create designs that will relate to those who will inhabit them. Similar to their European colleagues, architects in America must apply what we will call an “archeological methodology” to uncover relevant design criteria: Every site is a “palimpsest” of human intervention and geological events.
What is a palimpsest? It’s a parchment on which previously written, partially erased layers are still visible. Palimpsests provide excellent metaphors for studying sites because they capture the idea that history is never monolithic.
A monolithic view of history ignores the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and interpretations that actually make up historic reality. Though what we read about the past may have been crafted by yesterday’s “winners”, the truth is that history is always layered. Just as readers uncover multiple, often interweaving, narrative voices in well-written novels, so too do architects mine their sites for data.
America is no child. The United States may have been “born” on July 4, 1776. However, European settlers established our oldest cities long before our nation even existed. St. Augustine is 460 years old. Jamestown and Santa Fe are both 418 years old. Pittsburgh will be 300 years old in less than fifty years. Further, the land that these cities occupy was settled long before by Native Americans.
Our remarkable country is aging in place: Buildings, cities, and landscapes bear the marks of time like wrinkles on a face. They are places where the past and present can coexist. Like aging citizens, certain buildings and public spaces anchor collective memory even as the urban fabric has transformed around them.
It is exceedingly difficult to visit a place in the North American continent that lacks a deep context ready to explore one layer at the time. In a 2025 interview for the Biennale of Venezia, Architect Jean Gang, founder of Studio Gang, suggested that her team approached “every project starting with context and what is already on site—not just in a traditional environmental sense, but also in a way that considers the people, the geology, history, or existing buildings.”
3) A Difference in Attitude
We are suggesting that people reconsider the way they think of architecture here in America. There are fundamental differences between the way Americans and Europeans approach design. In this next section we’ll talk about the philosophical roots of this difference.
“Genius Loci”
In classical Rome, the term “Genius Loci” described the protective spirit of a place and referred to a location’s distinctive atmosphere, history and intrinsic nature. For example, in Tolkien’s works, the Shire has a distinct Genius Loci, peaceful, fertile, and pastoral. The term refers to intuitive and direct forms of knowledge that coexist with science.
By acknowledging and harnessing the power of Genius Loci, architects can create environments that are not merely functional but are truly transformative, places that connect with our deepest selves.
As the British poet, Alexander Pope, famously wrote in 1731,
“Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters or to rise, or fall…”
European buildings embody the principle of Genius Loci through the use of local materials, by respecting topography and landscape, with architectural continuity-—where new buildings integrate with older ones—with scale and proportion, by reflecting regional architectural styles, and even with symbolism and myth. The gargoyles of Notre-Dame provide a great example borrowing from pagan folklore and blending myth, fear, and protection into the very fabric of the building!
Giorgio Agamben
In “Creation and Anarchy”, the contemporary Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, examines how the act of creation in Western culture has long been entangled with political, economic, and religious origins. His writings imply that these entanglements have limited architecture’s “potentiality” by restricting not only the personal freedom of those who occupy buildings but also the potential of these buildings to change over time and be used for different purposes.
American buildings are particularly restricted in this way. For one thing, they are often deeply tied to utility and performance with specific, predefined purposes. For another, they are driven by the logic of property value so space must be quantifiable and profitable. Third, many American buildings are designed to be temporary or disposable (e.g. malls or developer-quality homes.) In Agamben’s terms, American architecture tends towards “pure actuality”. Designs conceived purely to serve a purpose or produce a result limit occupants’ freedom, flexibility, and imaginations.
Agambenian architecture doesn’t impose form, it withholds, suspends, and invites diverse interpretations. Contemporary European architects like Peter Zumthor and Carlo Scarpa have put these principles to work with buildings that defy interpretation and are open to many different uses and functions.
They are characterized by ambiguity, minimalism, and disjunction.
4) The Elements of Context
Whatever may be the philosophical roots of the challenges facing American architects, the results are certainly tangible: When architects employ limited criteria as they design, they restrict, to paraphrase Vitruvius, the strength, usefulness, and aesthetics of their creations.
Architects ALWAYS must react with or against something: As the critic Alberto Perez has written, “There is no architectural “ex-nihilo” creation.”[2] (meaning out of nothing) This means that architecture is ALWAYS contextual. Far from limiting the solutions that architects can create, acknowledging the past actually expands our vision by creating MORE variables to address, MORE problems to solve.
Yet architects can’t simply collect site information the way one would stamps, rare books, or vintage lunchboxes. Collecting information is only the beginning. Once a designer has studied these factors, it is still necessary to analyze what is truly important and devise architectural strategies that communicate those ideas. Please know that we are not advising that architects simply copy the past and build with outmoded styles.
The idea of decorating a steel post and beam structure with a facade that resembles one from ancient Greece in order to communicate ideals of power, stability, and order has been outmoded since the Chicago 1895 Columbian Exposition 130 years ago. The buildings in that exhibition were designed in a gleaming neoclassical style, and though they were designed to look eternal, they were built to be dismantled after the fair. This so-called “white city” was essentially a stage set. Even at the time, their construction raised deep ethical questions related to honesty of form and truth of materials.
Responding to a site’s context means translating history into the language of today’s hopes, dreams, needs, and construction methods. To build in Europe is to build with ghosts, not to silence them, but to let them speak in a new tongue.
European architects don’t reject history; they translate it. Not word for word, but poetically, so that the meaning remains even if the form evolves.
Next we’ll study how architects can use context to create timeless designs
5. Using Context to Create Timeless Designs
Adaptive architecture refers to buildings or sites designed to respond and adjust to changing conditions in their environment, user needs, or internal systems. Adaptive architecture is dynamic: It evolves over time, either automatically or with human assistance.
Buildings that can adapt with the times perform better, they are more efficient, and they last longer. Just as important, they possess deep connections to their sites. As we now know, these connections promote the growth of Genius Loci, which is integral to the creation of timeless designs.
Here are five ways to create adaptive architecture:
a) Optimize Space
Optimize space: The U.S. is wealthier than Europe, with a massive GDP, high rates of homeownership historically, and vast land. Yet millions of Americans cannot afford homes, especially in urban or high-growth areas. Housing prices here have risen dramatically faster than wages over the last few decades. The fact that homeowners like me have benefited is cold comfort for first-time buyers unable to buy in.
Even a rich country cannot automatically ensure affordable, equitable housing without intentional planning, regulations, and values that prioritize people over property. How can potential US homeowners adapt? When solutions are not coming from the top, the answer is to build smaller and, paradoxically, to build better.
Americans may love Scandinavian design but they dislike their size. Not only is the average American home 1,000 square feet larger than it was in 1973, it is 600 to 800 square feet larger than its European counterpart.
Why is this? The relatively higher cost of land, along with stricter regulations around building and energy efficiency, leads to more thoughtful, compact designs. In Europe, cities and towns put more emphasis on community elements like green belts, parks, and other areas where people can talk to their neighbors and spend time together. Europeans spend most of their time outside their homes with the rest of their community so they don’t need as many bathrooms or bedrooms.
In contrast, the United States is a “more is more” society. Though many owners feel that big homes reflect their status in society, they are creating big problems for themselves when they build additional space in their homes that they pay for one hundred percent of the time but only use five percent of the time. In Europe, there’s an understanding that you don’t need to have a massive home to live well. It’s more about quality of life and how efficiently you use space and resources.
b) Optimize Quality
Optimize quality: In the United States, most new buildings are constructed to start needing serious repairs around the twenty to forty year mark. The European model, on the other hand, emphasizes durability and long-term value. Many buildings, even in major cities, are constructed to last for generations. There’s less of a throwaway culture and there’s a strong tradition of repurposing old structures. For example, while the average lifespan of an American asphalt shingled roof is fifteen to twenty years, the average lifespan of a European clay tile roof is fifty to seventy five years.
Buildings constructed with nuance and detail provide far more interesting places to live and work than the generic alternative. Also, they pay for themselves over time. For example, Milan, where we spend a portion of our summers, is renowned for a design approach that reflects precision and quiet sophistication. This approach is deeply rooted in both Italian cultural values and the city’s role as a design capital. New Milanese buildings possess a respect for craftsmanship and a modernist aesthetic which is minimal but never cold.
In contrast, when my contemporary Pittsburgh home—which I designed and self-contacted with custom cabinets, verdigris copper panels, and the city’s first residential green roof—was complete, the bank appraised its value at half my construction cost. I was devastated! Thank goodness times have changed and design quality is now being appreciated in our city as never before. Today the home is worth nearly three times what it was back then. As well, I’ve lived in it for twenty-five years and it hasn’t fallen apart yet. To put in American terms, a quality home pays for itself. To phrase it as a European architect might, a quality home contributes to the Genius Loci of a place.
c) Consider the Natural Environment
Design Efficiently
It’s time more American architects designed efficiently. Green systems come in many shapes and forms. At Fisher ARCHitecture, we’re trained in the WELL, LEED, and Passive House standards. Though our clients may not want to pay for certifications, they come to us prepared to learn.
We mimic European buildings by employing passive techniques which naturally regulate temperature, light, and airflow without relying heavily on air conditioning or lighting. South facing windows, overhanging eaves, natural ventilation, and earth sheltered construction all bring down energy costs while improving the building experience.
We don’t lecture our clients about saving the planet. Rather, we suggest that they will get their money back over time if they spend more up front. Every green feature has a payoff date. Just as important, homes that respond to their environments possess Genius Loci because of their distinctive identities.
Yet sustainability goes well beyond project features. Building efficiently means building with fewer resources. The end goal is to bring down energy costs while minimizing the project’s embodied energy. Embodied energy is a great concept: It’s the hidden energy cost of making a material or building before it’s even used. It’s paradoxical that in the US, those with the means to design better, more efficient buildings often over-use resources as they are building. Sustainability should never be simply performative.
Topography matters
It’s time architects started designing around existing site conditions rather than demolishing them. Many contractors flatten their sites in order to save design costs. We recommend that you lower your construction costs by avoiding excessive site work. Designing around site conditions has the additional benefit of creating custom-made experiences for owners.
Topography matters also in the public realm: We recommend transforming geographies into public resources and destinations, not just boundaries.
Reconsider the Vernacular
It’s time to reconsider the wisdom of vernacular homes. Vernacular, meaning local, styles of architecture employ materials and distribute massing on the basis of context rather than trends. In Europe, homes—whether they be Tuscan farmhouses, Spanish Adobe dwellings, or Greek white-washed homes—are deeply connected to their locations, maximizing heat flow in winter and fresh air in the summer. At our office in Italy, we open and close windows like boatmen adjusting sails!
At one time, vernacular Pittsburgh homes—with their small size, ground floor basements, narrow shape, and brick exteriors—were both affordable and responsive to Pittsburgh’s climate. These homes were places where workers would socialize on their front porches with their families after work. In contrast, today’s Pittsburgh homes are much larger than in the past and rely on expensive heating and cooling systems, isolating inhabitants from their neighbors.
Design for Change
It’s time to design for environmental change: An archeological lens can reveal forgotten ecological wisdom embedded in older urban fabrics. At Gaudi’s Park Güell in Barcelona, the architect let the terrain shape the architecture: Paths follow the contours of the land, Structures seem to emerge from the earth, Built and natural elements blur together. The goal wasn’t to dominate nature, but to participate in it.
Designing for environmental change means designing “resilient” buildings: Making America’s buildings more resilient involves designing, upgrading, and maintaining them to better withstand natural disasters, climate change, aging infrastructure, and cyber/physical threats. True resilience respects local context and thus contributes to a community’s Genius Loci.
d) Recycle Space
We think of buildings and the spaces they create as static and unmovable. However, the truth is that not only do they change physically over time, their meanings can also change. It’s important that architects consider this as they design.
“Circular Urbanism”
A powerful urbanistic concept that captures this very European design approach is called “Circular Urbanism” which describes cities as living systems that continually recycle materials, spaces, and functions. When cities put circular urbanism to use, nothing is wasted and every piece of land, infrastructure, and cultural layer is treated as a resource to be reinterpreted rather than discarded.
A city’s “Urban Metabolism”, which is the sum of all resource flows and waste within a city, measures circular urbanism. Circular urbanism is not just about buildings. Parks, rivers, roads, and even obsolete industrial sites like Pittsburgh’s own Carrie Furnaces can be metabolized into new uses rather than being abandoned.
A key principle is that land and infrastructure are finite so each layer, whether physical or cultural, should be carefully reintegrated into contemporary life.
“Adaptive Reuse”
Circular urbanism encourages the continuous use of buildings over time even as their use changes, a concept known as “adaptive reuse”. This is a common practice in Europe, where architects preserve the look of old buildings while integrating contemporary uses, allowing the city to evolve without erasing its identity. At Fisher ARCHitecture, we believe the best form of preservation is to reuse and reinterpret all existing buildings, not just those that are labelled as special. Bea and I lectured on that topic a couple years ago at the AIA National Convention.
The idea is not to freeze the past, but rather to learn from it. Buildings should never be trapped in frigid loops where they are continually restored to their imagined original look. Rather, buildings should be refreshed and adapted to accommodate for change, which is inevitable. Circular urbanism requires protecting, collecting, and developing the assets of a place.
Preserving the built environment fosters a connection to the past. People require continuity, especially during rapid social, economic, or technological change. Interventions should therefore respond to a community’s sense of identity and memory in order to create spaces that feel rooted and relevant.
Our idea at Fisher ARCHitecture, which you may have heard before if you’ve listened to us speak, is to let old be old and new be new. Preserve old buildings but when you need to update them, do so in a way that reflects the way we live now. This approach not only preserves their physical appearance and memories, it facilitates the creation of new sets of memories that reflect today’s hopes and dreams.
e) Change the Rules
Bea and I are architects with limited power so we are in a position to tell the truth: The rules, systems, and incentives in the U.S. are largely stacked against building equitable, affordable, walkable neighborhoods. We recommend changing zoning rules to encourage mixed-use construction, increase density, promote urban infill, and deemphasize car culture.
Encourage Mixed Uses
First, it’s important to develop existing neighborhoods into places where residential, institutional, and commercial functions can coexist. This is a fundamental strategy to ensure our streets are active twenty-four hours a day as in Europe. A typical United States suburb consists only of houses, so you have to drive everywhere. As a result, the streets are deserted. It’s the same in many cities, which feel empty at five o’clock because no one lives there! Bea and I learned this while driving through Akron on a Friday evening a couple weeks ago. More eyes on the streets mean safer, more livable streets.
Cities need to update their zoning ordinances. Along with many experts in planning, architecture, land use law, and urban design, groups such as “Smart Growth America” are advocating today for a concept called “form-based” zoning. Form-base zoning allows more flexibility for what can be built on a property by using physical form rather than separation of uses as its organizing principle. New regulations would control building envelopes, massing, height, and placement without controlling how people would use them.
The goal is to encourage many different building uses, which would make our neighborhoods more walkable, both in the city and also in the suburbs. The physical outcome would be a more coherent urban fabric. The sociological outcome would be increased local identity, memory, and pride, reinforcing the community’s sense of place.
Though it may be hard to imagine my Shadyside neighbors welcoming a corner drug store on Westminster Place, real estate prices will no doubt dictate which uses will prevail in the end. We say let the retail market determine which uses will succeed and which will fail.
Leverage Density
Second, it’s important to leverage density as a way to create unique and personal space. Existing American zoning rules discourage the construction of modest homes which forces folks who have less money to move. Then, as smaller older homes are razed in favor of larger developer-driven homes with less quality, the character of the neighborhood disappears and its Genius Loci disappears.
We wholeheartedly support the Pittsburgh City Planning Commission’s position that increased housing density is essential to addressing the region’s ongoing housing shortage. In 2024, there were twice the number of single family homes built in the US per citizen than in Europe.
In Hamburg, Germany, nearly eighty percent of newly completed housing units last year were multi‑story residential structures. We have to make creative use of the limited space available here in Pittsburgh. Also, increasing urban density is a way to create evocative public and semi-public spaces.
Prioritize People
Third, prioritize people, not cars, and emphasize pedestrians’ experience wherever possible. In the US, our car-centric culture favors commercial malls outside the city with generic big boxes and impersonal architecture. Reforming parking policies and redesigning streets for people rather than cars would go a long way to addressing this issue. The result would be more vibrant neighborhoods and new, small economic districts located closer to where people live.
Promote Shared Infrastructure
Fourth, plan for shared infrastructure to create sustainable, livable cities. Europe is a quilt of services and infrastructure with universal access to key services. There, public transportation works, bikeways are everywhere, and public space is well-maintained. Despite its own complexities, Europeans tend to place a greater collective emphasis on public infrastructure, services, and shared spaces than Americans. Thoughtfully designed, accessible, shared infrastructure does more than support daily life; it lowers social isolation, creates a sense of belonging, and fosters a deep, living connection to place.
Why This Matters
So we’ve just introduced five ways to create timeless architecture: Optimize space, optimize quality, consider the natural environment, recycle space, and change the rules.
Journalists, influencers, and architects like Bea and me must be more persuasive in advocating for smarter, more sustainable design while showcasing the beauty and efficiency of smaller, well-crafted homes. If sustainability is framed as a luxury in its own right, as opposed to something that’s “cheap” or “small”, it might change owners’ purchasing patterns. Though the idea of “luxury” in the U.S. has often been associated with excess—luxury homes, luxury cars, luxury brands—there’s a growing movement to redefine luxury as sustainability, quality, and efficiency.
Back to the question of what is timeless architecture: If we conceptually remove time from architecture—meaning we set aside concerns about chronology and history—what we’re left with is the immediate, lived experience of the space. In that scenario, two key elements remain:
People: The users, inhabitants, observers, or participants in the space. Architecture, after all, is ultimately made for people, whether for shelter, movement, ritual, gathering, contemplation, or spectacle.
and Experiential Conditions: The spatial, sensory, and atmospheric qualities that affect how people feel and behave in the built environment. This includes light, shadow, materiality, sound, proportion, temperature, texture, and spatial relationships.
Three well-known European thinkers, Martin Heidegger, who emphasized “being-in-the-world”, Juhani Pallasmaa, who advocates for multisensory architectural experiences, and Peter Zumthor, who focuses on atmosphere and emotional resonance in space, all have written extensively about this subject.
Timeless architecture, therefore, is concerned with how people interact physically with space and how they move through and around buildings. This concept not only goes beyond mere use, it supersedes the aesthetics of any particular time in history: Jeanne Gang once remarked that she loved working with landscape architects because they “think in terms of time – how spaces will grow and change; how people will interact with them over the decades.”
Designing for longevity is concerned with creating places where people want to return. Paradoxically, to design architecture projects that transcend time, architects have to design “with time”, sifting through layers of information to create embodied, sensory, emotional experience so that people can connect with the spirit of a place, its Genius Loci.
The Castle in Bolzano in the Italian region of Trentino Alto Adige is a great example of how to connect people to a place both physically and spiritually. By framing epic views of the mountains, by surrendering to the existing ruins yet quietly connecting one project element to another, and by using materials that are complementary to the remains of the Castle, Architect Werner Tscholl has created a piece of architecture that complements its site with timeless elegance and grace.
Creating timeless architecture can scare both architects and their clients since project choices are not grounded entirely in facts. Even so, thought-provoking discussions between clients and architects can happen when architects focus on the experiences that a building will create in addition to its aesthetics and use. This is a great way to promote innovation and surmount fear of change. Active preservation, circular urbanism, and efficient design are not mere aesthetic gestures; they are methods for sustaining the life and culture of a place through design. Also, they don’t necessarily have to bring up a project’s cost.
When you return home tonight, We urge each person present to reexamine both their home and their city as though they were an archaeologist, remembering that every layer counts. You may find yourself newly appreciating the natural symmetry of our rivers and valleys; you may come to understand anew the way our parks reflect Pittsburgh’s unique identity, topography, and cultural memory; and you may see as though for the first time the way our neighborhoods retain deep cultural imprints of our European past in their architecture, institutions, and social patterns.
Examples from Europe teach not to copy the styles of old buildings or to romanticize the past. Instead, it is necessary to examine the full contents of a site’s palimpsest and then make careful choices on how to proceed. As Juhani Pallasmaa has written, “Architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world.” At its best, architecture forms a sensory and emotional bridge between the human body and its environment.
Our task is to approach every site as a living archive, where each decision—material, spatial, or social—creates a dialogue through time. If we can train ourselves to mine those layers, we will build architecture that is resilient, rooted, and timeless.