leaders
Eve Picker’s is the founder and past president of cityLAB. Her expertise in inner city redevelopment and regeneration has earned her broad recognition both in the Pittsburgh community at large and nationally. She has even been called a local ‘folk hero’. Committed to good design, her work consistently aims to make a positive contribution to the public realm with every project.
Eve has a background as an architect, city planner, urban designer, real estate developer, economic development strategist, publisher (founding publisher of Pop City), and co-founder of a provocative public forum for urban issues. All of these have provided her with a rich understanding of how cities work, how urban neighborhoods can be revitalized, what policies are needed to do so, and the unique marketing that creates the buzz necessary for regeneration. With cityLAB, her first non-profit venture, Eve is turning her passion for cities to broader, city-wide revitalization issues. Read more about Eve at evepicker.com, or say hello at eve@smallchange.com.
Pablo R. Garcia is the founder and principal of Pablo Garcia/POiNT, a collaborative and multidisciplinary research studio based in Pittsburgh. POiNT is dedicated to experiments in the spatial arts - architecture, design and the visual and performing arts, in a variety of scales from the portable to the urban. In addition to POiNT, Pablo is the Lucien and Rita Caste Chair in Architecture and Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Pablo was the 2007-2008 Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan College of Architecture + Urban Planning.
participants
Charrette Team Leader — Anne Chen, AIA, LEED AP, is a principal of EDGE studio, an architecture firm established in Pittsburgh in 1995 and recognized with over 30 design awards and national publications. Specializing in higher education and cultural/public projects, her firm’s list of notable projects include projects for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Erie Art Museum, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Anne is also a member of the Advisory Committee for the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, a board member of the Pittsburgh Glass Center and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Institute for Architects.
Charrette Team Leader — Dee Briggs is a sculptor born in 1968 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania. She received a Masters of Architecture degree from Yale University in 2002 with undergraduate studies in architecture from the City College of New York. Briggs exhibits nationally and teaches in the Schools of Art and Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. She lives and works in New York and Pittsburgh.
Charrette Team Leader — Gerald Morosco is the founder and president of Gerald Lee Morosco Architects. He has over 26 years of professional experience in the practice of architecture and the allied arts, land and urban planning, downtown revitalization and interior design. He is widely recognized for his nationally award-winning work in historic preservation.
Jerry trained as an architect traditionally, by way of apprenticeship, in the offices of Taliesin Architects, the successor firm continuing the architectural practice of Frank Lloyd Wright. His best-selling first book, How to Work with an Architect was published in May 2006.
Charrette Team Leader — Jon Rubin is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the social dynamics of public places and the idiosyncrasies of individual and group behavior. His solo and collaborative projects include creating a game show for ideas, opening a fake store in an indoor shopping mall, starting a restaurant that secretly runs via takeout from its double across the street, broadcasting an office's telephone conversations through a talking piano and developing a free nomadic art school. He has exhibited video, drawings, installations and public projects internationally, including at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico), The Rooseum (Sweden), Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Germany), Nemo Film Festival (Paris), as well as in backyards, living rooms and street corners. He is famous locally for his current project, the Waffle Shop.
Charrette Team Leader — Matt Gray was born in Sydney to English parents with Canadian passports and has had a notable career which includes teaching, directing and performing at many prestigious schools such as LAMDA, the Royal Academy of Dance, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Arts Council of the Isle of Man and Concordia in Shanghai. Most recently Matt was seen performing in Quantum Theater’s production of 36 Views, as well as directing Crime and Punishment for Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater (PICT) which the City Paper called “the best production of 2009”. He is currently working on a new adaptation of RUR (where the word ‘robot’ was first used), continuing his research into Live Performance Skills and Digital Technology, is a professor in the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, and is directing the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s production of Richard III.
Charrette Team Leader — Spike Wolff works both as a freelance designer in Pittsburgh and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, teaching undergraduate design studios, coordinating the school’s lecture series and curating the 2010 wats:ON festival. Recent freelance projects include The Hurricane a temporary jazz club in the Hill District and exhibition design for the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh.
Spike moved to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles, where she worked on museum projects including The Getty Center, exhibition design for the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA and historic restoration projects of the Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra and the Loewy House by Albert Frey.
focus group facilitator — Nathan Martin is the founder and CEO of DeepLocal, an innovation studio that helps companies rapidly develop and implement new ideas and technology. Nathan leads a team of creative people, each with specific areas of expertise all working to apply the ingenuity of art to the challenges of business.
Nathan has taught art and design at several universities and holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, both in Electronic Media Art. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work in art, music, and technology, and continues to write and speak about his passion for integrating the artists' process into the design and development of improved ways of experiencing people, information and objects in this world.
Film crew — Will Zavala is an assistant professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He specializes in documentaries and founded the Documentary Salon, a monthly film club, in 2006. Will is from California, where he studied filmmaking at Stanford University and produced videos for clients in the San Francisco bay area. In 2003 he moved to Pittsburgh with his new wife and son because they wanted to live there, and they they now have a daughter as well. Will’s most recent documentary, Virgil Cantini: The Artist in Public, was exhibited with other short films at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in the fall of 2009. Will's class in Advanced Documentary Production is documenting "Pop Pittsburgh Up".
Mickey McManus is president and CEO of MAYA Design, a design consultancy and innovation lab dedicated to taming the complexity of technology products. He leads an interdisciplinary team that creates innovative ways to integrate information and technology into a satisfying consumer experience. He speaks often about the need to include the human element in design, especially in the looming multi-billion dollar pervasive computing industry, which will encompass a multitude of networked products and smart services throughout our environment. Mickey was formerly co-founder and senior vice president of creative vision and strategy at élan communications, an integrated communications consultancy.
Focus group Adam Nelson, founder of Obscure Games.
Focus group Dutch MacDonald is COO at MAYA Design, a human-centered design and technology consultancy, where he focuses on the intersection of people, technology, and the physical world. Mr. MacDonald is a registered architect in both Pennsylvania and New York. He practiced architecture for more than 17 years, most recently as vice president at EDGE Studio, a respected Pittsburgh-based architectural practice. Along the way, he became fascinated with what sets great creative endeavors apart operationally and how business can use design thinking as a differentiator. Mr. MacDonald’s degree in architecture is from Carnegie Mellon University, where he is an adjunct associate professor. He also studied at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he lived and worked. He was a fellow at the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh, completing executive seminars in 2003 and 2004.
Focus group Gillian Goldberg, philosophy graduate.
Focus group Heather Estes, Director of Marketing at Deeplocal.
Focus group Hilary Robinson is the dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Trained as a painter in the 1970s, she spent many years working as an artist and as an arts administrator, critic and lecturer. She taught history and theory of art at the University of Ulster and in 1998 became research co-ordinator, helping, by 2001, to place the School in the top tier of Art and Design institutions in the UK. In 2002 she was appointed Head of the School of Art and Design. Her own research is in the field of contemporary art theory and has published numerous journal, magazine and catalogue essays, including the anthology Visibly Female in 1987, Feminism-Art-Theory 1968-2000 in 2001 and in 2006 Reading Art, Reading Irigaray: the Politics of Art by Women.
She is a board member of The Andy Warhol Museum, The Mattress Factory, Quantum Theatre, Silver Eye, and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, as well as a member of the Programming Advisory Committee of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
Focus group Kathy Oliver, Producer.
Focus group - Maxine Markfield, graduated as a Coro Fellow in Pittsburgh in May 2010.
Focus group Mykia Long, Coro Fellow, Pittsburgh.
Focus group Ryan Hopkins, founder of the Public Square Project.
Focus group Sandhya Krishnan, Executive Director of Blue Mango.
Focus group Todd Owens, Dewey & Kaye.
Charrette team Allen Hahn, The Secret City.
Charrette team Amanda Markovic, Edge Studio.
Charrette team Angela Gonzalez, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Arthur Azoulai, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Constance Vale, Architectural Designer at EDGE Studio.
Charrette team Craig Rosman, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Dana Bishop-Root, Co-founder of Transformazium, Braddock, PA.
Charrette team Emily Sullivan, Point.
Charrette team Franklin Krouse, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Gary Carlough, Founder of EDGE Studio, Pittsburgh.
Charrette team Isaac Kwon, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Jonathan Greene is an architect and designer who has taken a different philosophical approach to design. Traveling extensively he documents buildings and places, settling for short periods in places that “beg of more attention” where he temporarily puts down roots, and funnels his experience of that place into a dwelling for himself.
Charrette team Joseph Koon, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Joshua Welsh, Adjunct Instructor, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University.
Charrette team Joy Kang, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Kaitlin Miciunas, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Karla Boos, Founder and Artistic Director, Quantum Theatre.
Charrette team Kendra Gaul, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Liam Lowe, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Liza Langer, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Michael Jeffers, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Misha Varshavsky, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Niko Triulzi, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Noelle White, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Rob Pfaffmann, AIA, AICP is an architect and planner with over 30 years of diverse experience leading the design of key architecture, preservation and planning projects in the Pittsburgh region. Through his writings, drawings and research, and community involvement, he is known for his advocacy of design, historic preservation and urban planning policy.
Rob began his career in higher education at Syracuse University and then moved to the Pittsburgh office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in 1983. There he has led key projects, ranging from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute to the Heinz History Center. Since founding Pfaffmann + Associates in 1996, Rob's design leadership has continued with a wide range of award-winning work that includes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, the Homewood and Hill District branches of the Carnegie Library and Alcoa's US Business Services Center.
Rob's urban planning work is grounded in his passion for Pittsburgh's historic neighborhoods and riverfronts. He has developed community plans for many Pittsburgh Neighborhoods including the Central Northside and Lawrenceville. His proposals for the Reuse of the Mellon Arena received an AIA design award last fall.
Charrette team Sara Blumenstein managed cityLAB's experiments and designed cityLAB's programs, graphics, and web projects from 2011 to 2014. She loved working on cityLAB's projects, especially the Garfield Night Market and Tiny Houses. Read more about Sara on her website.
Charrette team Stephanie Newcomb, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Talia Perry, Architecture Student.
Charrette team Zach Cohen, Architecture student.
FIlm crew Barbra Labbie, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Film crew David Mansfield, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Film crew Matthew Day, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Film crew Sam Price, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Film crew Senay Erdem, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Film crew Tony Miga, Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Charrette plot room Elizabeth Duroy, Architecture Student.
Charrette photographer Magali Duzant, Photographer and illustrator extraordinaire.
Sponsors
Carnegie Mellon's School of Architecture lent Pablo Garcia, professor of architecture, to the pop Pittsburgh up charrette, provided a room for the event and sponsored lunch for all the participants.
EDGE Studio sponsored drawing supplies for the pop Pittsburgh up charrette.
MAYA design sponsored morning and afternoon tea at the pop Pittsburgh up charrette.