CHAPTER 1
BETWEEN BRIDGES
DESIGN STUDIES OF THE PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING IN PITTSBURGH, PA
INTRODUCTION
Knowingly or unknowingly, we employ, analyze and practice the following cognitive processes in design:
Reflect on, establish and internalize the constellation of relevant attributes, both in general, overarching status, as well as in their particular, circumstantial mutations ( = research)
Induce, recognize, enhance and apply targeted intuition, to bring forth the germ of the physical manifestation of an integrated universe, containing all the elements from the previous phase, ordered by ethical, epistemological and ontological hierarchies (= design)
Apply the selected and relevant societal, environmental and technological restrictions, in order to communicate the conditions of singularity (= design development)
The case study of the design of the Pittsburgh Public Safety Building intends to illustrate the previously described issues. The drawings are excerpted from a much longer process, but they represent the changes and the major steps of the evolutional process. The ensemble on the shoreline of the Monongahela River, was to include -additionally to the Public Safety Building - a light-rail train station, a Federal Courthouse and parking for 2800 cars.
Barely inhibited by the existing elements, this image depicts a childlike interpretation of a tower, the labyrinth of roads, as the parking, and the adjoining volume of the jail. The Monongahela River is in the forefront
Another uninhibited drawing, breaking with the habit of repeated pancake-like floorplates.
To draw without much thinking is as important, as the opposite of it, to reflect for hours or more, then capture those thoughts with a form.
Thinking with our hand. I baptized this process as "think - ink", referring to the usual media of my drawings.
Another quick impression of the extended site. The Public Safety Building has to establish its identity against the forest of tall buildings.
First and very significant result of the "targeted intuition" process. The close to scale drawing provides the potential to exploit the complexity gained from the rotated grids of the parking and the office building. At this stage it is as yet hidden, the office's directionality prevails.
The bridges point to the jail, the hill, and the towers in the background, and we can see the new elements of the nverbank. The importance of the siluet-effect is clearly tangible, in order to gain a formal identity against the race of being the highest vertical prism, and so the most important member of the business district.
Just a little adjustment, and the known fact of the smaller office module superimposed on the sixty feet grid of the parking structure created the feeling of the direction to explore.
Known and felt, two different appearances of wisdom one has to be aware of during the design. However strong the "known" part, and barely perceptiblthe "felt" one is, one has to listen! It is something, we receive from a greater receptacle of knowledge, maybe as a gift for our relentless toiling towards the "solution".
All present, the jail, the hill behind it, the two bridges, the volume of the parking and on top of it the PSB. Looming in the background we see some of the high-rise buildings of Downtown Pittsburgh.
Bridges removed, this is the first three-dimensional image of the jail - court house - parking -office building ensemble. A triangular volume is carved out from the parking, in order to accommodate the bend of the Penn Lincoln Parkway, present already in the first two site plans, shown earlier.
Office floor plan grid and circulation system discovery diagrams. The right one shows the smaller offices banded around the three perimeters of the block surrounding so some internal service area, vertical circulation group (with the diagonal lines) and a large room, which borrowed its name from H. H.
Richardson s Carnegie - Libraries, called the living room of the city . This would be the interface between the Planning Authorities of the cityof Pittsburgh, and its interested population.
View of the roof.
Superimposed grids of the office structure and the parking beneath of it. The complexity of a double transfer-beam system is predicted by this overlap
The online of the office and the projected structural grid of the parking.
Graphic notes about the escalators leading from ground level to the elevated plaza.
Articulated massing of the office tower.
Same as before, put in the immediate context of its surrounding.
Watery view of the bridges and the PSB Complex.
These quick, but telling images test the design, because through them, the ambiance and character of the new situation can be evaluated simultaneously weighing the known and the felt impulses.
Another of those "money pictures".
Involuntary exaggeration sometimes is necessary, because it reveals the subconscious direction of the explorations.
Most of the times the bottom of the structural slabs will be visible from street level, so to add Le Corbusier's fifth elevation, the roof, we have to think of the sixth one, the bottom of the plates.
Only the birds will see this 3D image, yet it reveals some formal attempts, to express surface continuity of the volume. It also has a perceptible frontal tendency, having a truncated front, a curved back, and two flat sides.
Outline of the section and general floor-plan of the parking. Available parking spaces are inventoried. Reference is being made to the locations of the transferstructures.
The previous structure, with the enclosed spaces of the plaza level, and the indication of the continuing vertical envelopes of the tower.
