Located in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Southside neighborhood on 22nd Street, the site is on the edge between the dense residential rowhouses and the large scale industrial warehouse district. The site is embraced by the old warehouses of the past Duquesne Brewery and most notably the, now defunct, corrugated metal warehouse bridge crossing 22nd Street.

Design Solution
The design of the Silvertop house started as a response to the dense urban landscape in which it is situated. The house begins to mediate between these two very diverse contexts of the rowhouses and industrial warehouses. Diagrammatically the house is made up of two massing elements brought together around the knuckle of the house, the vertical focal point of the home.

While the house has a hard edge toward the street and alley, the remainder of the house opens to an interior courtyard-like backyard. The house is organized around an interior vertical space with a cantilevered steel and wood stair rising up through the space.