Street Talk
Fresh ideas about design
The Integrated Design Practice
04.2018
By Claudia Saladin, ASLA, LEED AP
"The more complex the ecosystem and the greater the diversity of its parts, the more successfully it can resist and recover quickly from stress. "
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The Craft of Story Building
02.2018
By Mason Radkoff, CSI/CCCA, LEED AP BD+C
A story’s form should be organic— the moves it makes, the shape it takes. Initial visions of setting, theme, voice, and plot emerge as the writer intuits what the story needs without the anchor of minutia holding things back. Art is made.
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6 Signs Your Office Needs a Refresh
10.2017
By Tom Price
When was the last time you refreshed your office, academic, or social space? If the answer is 10 years or more, it’s definitely time to consider making updates. Maintaining a workplace that is relevant and performative is critical to keeping a sharp competitive edge. It also helps recruit and retain the best talent while improving ...
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Inside a mid-century classic, glimpses of our Pittsburgh office
08.2016
By Leah Patgorski
Strada’s Pittsburgh office has been in the former Alcoa building for a year and a half now. This distinctive modernist skyscraper (completed in 1953) has offered us plenty of design inspiration, from the aluminum details around every turn to the vintage advertising sketches and collages left in a flat file by former inhabitants. The new ...
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Learning from the past with the Victorian Society in America
07.2016
By Stacey Blankin
A founding principal of Strada, John Martine, AIA, is a highly respected preservationist, recognized for preserving the historical fabric and at the same time, drawing upon the past in developing new architectural designs. The success of his award-winning work stems from his exhaustive study of Victorian-era architecture. On June 15-21, John attended the Victorian Society ...
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Learning by Doing: Designing Active Learning Spaces
06.2016
By Robert W. McCauley, AIA, and Stacey Blankin, LEED AP
For the first time in decades, schools from elementary through higher education are dramatically changing the way they teach. Acknowledging the limitations of the traditional classroom, they are embracing new pedagogical opportunities presented by advanced technologies, and rethinking their academic spaces. Active learning encourages increased student interaction, deeper engagement with the material, and greater ownership ...
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Promoting disruptive innovation for social change in the mountains of West Virginia
06.2016
By Dana Coester, Creative Director, WVU Reed College of Media
Strada recently celebrated the opening of Evansdale Crossing, a five-story, 100,000-SF mixed-use social hub that is interspersed with academic spaces on West Virginia University’s Evansdale campus. Strategically located at the heart of the building is Reed College of Media’s dynamic new Media Innovation Center. We invited Dana Coester, the Creative Director of the Media Innovation ...
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Congratulations Kevan Rutledge on becoming a Registered Architect
03.2016
By Strada
It’s hard to envision an effort as demanding as an Ironman Triathlon but the journey to becoming an architect might just be comparable. The first stage—the educational component—typically requires a fifth year of study and is shaped by lengthy studios, regular all-nighters, tortuous crits, and a year-long thesis. Surviving this leads to the second stage—an ...
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Surprises and Challenges
03.2016
By Raymond F. McCaughey, RA, Associate
Having worked at a few professional services firms, I find the work at Strada entails a unique difference from all of the others—at Strada, surprises are good things. And along with the changes of an evolving business world, where each client has a slightly different set of needs to resolve, I often find the best ...
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How design is like quantum physics
02.2016
By Edward A. Shriver, FAIA
I doubt that architecture and quantum physics have ever been considered in the same sentence, but I’ll argue that they are different perspectives on the same problem. Some background In the early 1900s, physicists worked to explain how sub-atomic particles behaved. The standard (Newtonian) worldview had for centuries described how everything worked, until suddenly it ...
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