How do we design in contexts that are foreign to us? Our neighborhoods, towns, and cities continue evolving, forcing architecture to keep up. Designing architecture to “fit-in” to a specific environment is a framework from the sophomore design studio titled, “Fitting-In.” Second-year architecture students from this studio drew inspiration from a series of neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

The semester kicked off with a class trip to Pittsburgh to experience firsthand the environments students would be designing in and around. The analysis of proportions, projections, materials, color, and building materials all factored into how students built their understanding of the neighborhoods. When students returned to Buffalo, these observations were used to create a series of ‘building portraits’. The associated assignment was to draw a house as it exists, then apply exaggeration, transplantation, and abstraction transformations to each successive drawing. 

This portrait study is designed to help students pick up on any and all peculiarities they discover. What do these minute details say about a neighborhood or the larger community? How can they be reflected through students' varied styles of representation? Students are encouraged to interpret the historical grain of these neighborhoods through the lens of twenty-first century architecture.

Wysocki was drawn to the rich yellow-green color of a house in the Manchester neighborhood. The wearing-away paint inspired the start of the portrait study, where she chose to exaggerate the peeling condition of the paint. Megan then used transplantation as a way to reference a nearby elementary school’s mural by integrating the existing mural onto the façade of her building.

Students learned how a set of values could inspire design decisions rather than a particular style of one individual or context. Understanding the impact these values have on overall form and morphology steered how students interpreted the architectural characteristics of their assigned neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

By building a catalog of architectural representation through the building portraits, students reflected on historical, social, physical, and environmental conditions. This then provided a baseline for students going forward in the semester.

Establishing the portraits and techniques used as a precedent, students designed a library fit for the given community. Wysocki merged two different building typologies, a library, and a greenhouse.

She defined a library as a program that encourages the growth of knowledge by providing resources for learning and research. Greenhouses are designed explicitly as growing environments for plants and living things. In a neighborhood suffering from a stable food source, the greenhouse provided a community garden space for produce and other plants.

Contrasting materials of brick and glass come together to form two distinct buildings with a special alleyway in between, covered by a tree canopy. The material selection, combined with transplanted columns from a nearby neighborhood church, creates a space that encourages involvement and participation from all community members. It was essential to Wysocki for the library design to contextually fit into the neighborhood's fabric, with the hope that, in time, it could become a community landmark.

Students: Carol Thomas, Megan Wysocki

Faculty: Greg Delaney (coordinator), Samendy Brice, Lukas Fetzko, Jon Spielman, Adam Thibodeaux, Austin Wyles

Term: Spring 2022

Course: ARC202

Program: BS Arch