SAH Pittsburgh Seminar

7227 Reynolds Street,Pittsburgh PA 15208

30 April, 2022

Description

Building Community: Pittsburgh Reckonings, Renewal, Repair Pittsburgh is a city of immigrants, industry and innovation, a laboratory for experimentation and a place where people from around the world have made their homes and created a vibrant, densely packed mosaic of distinctive communities. Pittsburgh is also notable as a city that has frequently remade itself in the wake of major economic and social shifts—during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when city planners and titans of industry shaped cultural institutions, parks and public infrastructure; after World War Two, when the Pittsburgh Renaissance forged by politicians and business leaders implemented a modernist vision of urban renewal that caused significant displacement and enduring damage to vulnerable communities; and following the demise of the steel industry in the 1980s when Pittsburgh emerged as a leading center for research, medicine and higher education, and more recently as a high tech hub. The Pittsburgh city seminar will look at current, grassroots, neighborhood-based initiatives that seek to build on the city’s distinctive histories to address an array of challenges that resonate across a spectrum of scales—from the local to the national and international. Speakers will discuss how history informs present initiatives and future visions; how a neighborhood, site or building can be reimagined as a place of inspiration, a showcase for creativity, an incubator for tolerance; and how individuals and groups are working together to confront, challenge and counter the destabilizing effects of local traumas and global threats. The seminar will underline the hard work of creating consensus around shared goals that aim to make more humane, inclusive, and livable environments as well as places that tell stories and create shared understanding of a community’s identity and legacy. The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all. SAH serves a network of local, national, and international institutions and individuals who, by vocation or avocation, focus on the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life.