PHOTO: ED MASSERY, 2015
ARTISTIC LICENSE
EMOTIONAL
ARCHITECTURE
The adventurous work of Pittsburgh
architect Arthur Lubetz gets its close-up
in the Museum of Art’s Heinz
Architectural Center. BY BARBARA KLEIN
The renovated Sharpsburg Library is now a community standout.
ressed in shades of black with a
shock of white hair, Pittsburgh
architect Arthur Lubetz looks nothing
like his buildings. You know the buildings;
they’re the ones that stand in bright colorful
contrast to their somewhat plain and
predictable neighbors.
Case in point: Sharpsburg Community
Library. In 2014, Lubetz and his architectural
firm Front Studio took on a modest renovation
project. One year and only about $400,000
later, the library was transformed from the
inside out. The interior contains industrial
elements such as concrete flooring and
exposed trusses to reflect the region’s roots,
D
are on loan from the Architecture Archives at
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a key ally
in the project.
“When the show was first proposed,”
Lubetz recalls, “I dismissed the idea because
most of our work is low-budget. But I feel
very good that they thought it was worthy.”
The fact that Lubetz designs within what’s
considered by the industry as modest budgets perhaps makes his creations that much
more impressive. “Arthur has always done
provocative, adventurous, and substantive
work that is important artistically and historically,” says architectural historian and critic
Charles Rosenblum.
Carnegie Tech (now CMU). Still, his plan
was to become a medical doctor. But along
the way, Lubetz reconnected with one of his
earliest art teachers, Anita Morgenstern, who
introduced him to the artistry in architecture.
He credits her as a major force in his life.
Intrigued by the possibilities, Lubetz
enrolled in Carnegie Tech’s School of
Architecture, and after graduating in 1967
wasted little time before hanging out his
shingle under the moniker Lubetz Architects.
Some 40 years later, he joined forces with
two of his former students to create his
current firm, Front Studio, with offices in
New York and Pittsburgh.
“I learned a long time ago that red paint doesn’t cost any more than beige. Color is a direct link to emotion.”
- ARCHITECT ARTHUR LUBETZ
while the exterior’s corrugated metal paneling
—painted in not-so-subtle tones of yellow,
orange, red, purple, and green—breathes
new life into this public space.
“I learned a long time ago,” Lubetz says,
“that red paint doesn’t cost any more than
beige. Color is a direct link to emotion.”
Inciting an emotional response to architecture is what Lubetz has been doing for
the past 50 years. And for 10 weeks this
spring, Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz
Architectural Center will showcase this
work. Action, Ideas, Architecture: Arthur
Lubetz/Front Studio opens March 11 and
will feature some of the architect’s most
recognizable and acclaimed buildings, not
to mention a few concepts that never quite
materialized—not yet, anyway. Many of the
drawings and photographs in the exhibition
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As the show’s guest curator, Rosenblum
is tasked with finding the best way to represent a full and still-active career in a single
exhibition. For the past 18 months, he’s been
busy gathering drawings, models, computer
renderings, photographs, and video interviews
to highlight the process and projects that
have defined Lubetz’s professional persona
over five decades.
It’s a daunting task to be sure, but the
subject is a familiar one for Rosenblum.
Nearly 30 years ago, he enjoyed a brief stint
in Lubetz’s studio. Today they both teach at
the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon.
That sense of familiarity may be relatable
to Pittsburghers. After all, Lubetz is a native
son who grew up taking Saturday art classes
at the Arts and Crafts Center of Pittsburgh
(now Pittsburgh Center for the Arts) and at
To this day, Lubetz insists, “Architecture
can be an art. It can be an experience. In
a museum, people open their mind to be
involved, to be moved by the art. People
don’t do that with architecture.”
And in his opinion, architecture doesn’t
often demand that kind of attention.
“Today, most of the stuff is ordinary, boring,
bland, unengaging, with no experiential quality
to it,” he asserts.
By contrast, his work, in his words,
“screams out to be noticed.” But there’s
more to consider than the shock and awe
of the bold geometric shapes and startling
colors that are his stock and trade. By
design, his buildings are “incomplete.”
Ductwork, pipes, and conduits are left
uncovered; metal, steel, and concrete are
left to wear and take on interesting patinas
(discolorizations); straight lines, perfect
symmetry, and right angles are sometimes
left out of the equation.
Perhaps most importantly, the people who
live or work in a particular space are left to
reconfigure it to better align with their everchanging needs. In other words, Lubetz does
not view architecture as an absolute, unyielding
force that the occupant must adapt to.
Consider the Glass Lofts on Penn Avenue.
This green and silver four-story complex, completed in 2010, is home to residential condos
and retail shops. According to a Front Studio
synopsis, it is also “a space fluid in its being,
imperfect and incomplete—waiting to be transformed by the people who will live in and use it.”
“When something is incomplete,” Lubetz
adds, “it gets into your imagination, it engages
your mind.”
Through the years, Lubetz and company
have engaged critics, earning positive reviews
in The New York Times, Interior Design, and
Metropolitan Home, as well as from the
American Institute of Architects, taking home
awards for the Glass Lofts, Squirrel Hill
Carnegie Library, Sharpsburg Library, and
Hartford City Hall Annex and Public Library.
Lubetz has also stirred the imagination
of generations of aspiring architects. “I was a
little bit intimidated at first,” former student
and CMU alumna Nina Barbuto recalls. “It was
2004, and I was like 19 or 20 and my mind
was getting blown. He kept telling us that ‘no
one cares what you want, they only know what
you do.’
“He helped people get out of their brains
and into the world. He definitely helped me to
define who I’ve become,” she says.
Today, Barbuto is the founder and director of
Assemble. Located in Garfield, not far from the
Glass Lofts, Assemble is a community space
where everyone, but primarily kids, come
together to create, experiment, and explore.
Barbuto calls her project a kind of social architecture that encourages experiential learning.
Like his classroom lessons, it seems
Lubetz’s career enjoys a certain kind of timelessness. As far as he’s concerned, retiring is
not an option, and neither is being boring. “I’m
willing to be provocative,” he says, “and I
always try to have fun.”
These days, Lubetz’s idea of fun is getting
involved with the Mattress Factory’s Skyspace
addition. Donated by artist James Turrell, the
14-foot-tall, oval-shaped permanent installation
is expected to open to the public later this year.
But no matter where or when a Lubetz project may emerge, one thing remains constant,
Rosenblum observes: “Arthur creates
spaces—and experiences.” n
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