1 + 3 + 9 _v.1.2

Architecture is the medium through which we live our lives - an entity which grows, evolves, and adapts as dynamically as the living population who inhabits it.


However, the relationship between context and dweller is symbiotic - not only do we shape the physicality of our environment to meet our needs, desires, and hopes for the future, but the built environment we have created inevitably shapes us in return.  Architecture structures the spaces we live within and outside of:  it creates boundaries and connections, eliminating certain opportunities and promoting others.  It creates the context of our memories, it informs and affects who we are, where we come from, and who we will grow to be, and the dynamics of this relationship are perpetual and inescapable.  

Pittsburgh has historically been defined by its rivers in relation to industry usage.  Now that this historic usage has become defunct, the city is realizing that the rivers need a new purpose and a new place in the identity of Pittsburgh.  Through architectural intervention, this repurposing of the rivers and reinvention of their image within the city and the cognitive maps of its inhabitants can be achieved.  By infusing the design intervention with the current values and projected future goals of the architecture's inhabitants, the dynamics of the symbiotic relationship are engaged.  After the inhabitants take affect on their built environment, their values are instilled in the resultant creation, which will in turn affect both contemporary inhabitants of the city as well as future generations.  The cycle continues when the architecture encourages inverse adaptation by the inhabitants to progress in the future.