Daniel Gehr

Hazelwood is residential Pittsburgh neighborhood with a high proportion of vacancies and vacant lots.  We proposed a renovation to a wood frame home with a neighboring vacant lot.  The key renovation was to increase the home's insulating capabilities at the absolute lowest possible cost.  

The exposed facade will grow an exterior layer of vegetation and interior rooms will be lined with insulating panels.  The insulating material is Recycled Tire Fluff which is free and readily available to pick up locally. Thermal calculations illustrate the economic advantages.  These slides of the third presentation to the client are a visual summary of the research and design solutions.

I worked with Matt Dawson, Dan Stzanga, Marcos Gonzales-Bode, and Jason Kim.

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."  Blaise Pascal.

I spoke with people who work in this area, who live on neighboring streets and in neighboring neighborhoods, about what they would use a library for if one were to exist on Butler Street; a lone busy street of commercial gentrification amidst neglected residences, many vacant.  People asked for a sheltered place to on the main road to rest, read, or pass the time.

There is an abundance of circulation in this proposal for a library.  I use circulation to create the sense of privacy and ownership of the specific space an inhabitant may find and use.  Herein is a journey, upwards or downwards, to openness or to concealment.  I believe that to make one's own choices and rest peacefully opens up one's mind as much as opening a book or a webpage.

This is a space for people to feel comfortable with themselves, by themselves or with others, in their neighborhood which is changing before them.

This project won a Studio Design Book Award from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, in 2011.

James O'toole was my professor during this project and I learned from him how my emotions empower my creativity.

This competition, Aging in Place, called for a redesign of an existing residential kitchen to accommodate people with physical handicaps and adapt to the morphing needs of a family.

We chose to renovate a galley kitchen in an apartment building located in the South Side Slopes district of Pittsburgh.  The existing galley kitchen is oriented on the east-west axis.

I worked with Richard May and Tony Zhang. 

This submission won First Place.

The project site is on the edge of East Liberty, a Pittsburgh neighborhood starting to commercially gentrify.  The MLK Jr. East Busway runs along the southern side of the lot where the street level drops 20'.

This is an educational space, a sheltered public gathering space, a wood shop, and a mausoleum storage space.  Of the three circulation towers; one is a freight elevator and the other two are wooden staircases, one of which is private and the other public with access limited to outdoor spaces on the street and top level.

I worked with Marcos Gonzalez-Bode.

A youth educational facility centered on the ecosystems of Frick Park and the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh PA. A stream diverting Frick Parks’s water runoff to pass through the site on its way to the Monongahela is established between an excavated outdoor labyrinth and interior classrooms.

I iterated through experimental modeling with unusual materials at varying scales.