They packed the house in New York last September, some 1,500 people from around the world, giving architect David Lewis the
International Downtown Association’s first Presidential Award for lifetime achievement. “It was extremely embarrassing,” Lewis grumps. Sitting in his West Homestead home, sipping black tea strong enough to strip varnish off furniture, he explains. “Nothing I’ve ever done was ever done by me alone,” Lewis says. “It was always done in teams. Teams not just of professionals, but of citizens.”
Born in a South African Brahmin family, grandson of a Capetown mayor,
Lewis came of age during apartheid, which he abhorred. The racially motivated beating death of a fellow university student “galvanized my life,” Lewis recalls. “It gave me a sense of purpose.”
Serving in the navy during World War II, Lewis mustered out in England, where he found cities blitzed into rubble.
Wanting to help, he enrolled in Leeds’ architectural school, setting out to rebuild England. “I wanted to do something that related to my mission,” Lewis recalls, “helping improve social conditions.”
Visiting America, Lewis connected with then-
Carnegie Tech, which made him the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. Coming in 1963, Lewis told his students to “go out and choose real problems.” Also inviting financiers, developers, and other interested parties to his seminars, Lewis revolutionized architectural instruction, taking it out of the artist’s garret and into the street.
Asked by the Pittsburgh Public Schools to work on the ill-fated Great High Schools plan, Lewis asked on three top students to help. Setting up an office in the attic of his Oakland home – a door perched on two sawhorses served as the desk -- by February, 1964, they had formed
Urban Design Associates.
Moving away from the then-prevalent Architect-as-Auteur school, UDA
instead adopting a team approach, becoming one of the first firms to open up the design process. “History was on our side,” Lewis shrugs.
There was more than history. Bringing a creative sensitivity, an urbanist’s grit, and an architect’s iron ribs, Lewis’ world-class intelligence, innate good cheer, and near-infinite experience helped create successes literally the world over -- New York to New Orleans, Toronto to Baltimore, Russia to Scotland. Locally, UDA’s handiwork can be seen in Crawford Square, the Centre Avenue Corridor, the Village of Shadyside, Manchester, and the North Shore.
One highlight came some 20 years ago, in 1988, when Lewis brought Britain’s Prince Charles to Pittsburgh’s Remaking Cities conference. Using the Mon Valley – devastated by the catastrophic loss of Big Steel – Lewis preached the gospel of rebuilding, using the bones of what’s there, what was there, and the collective memory and will of the people. “Tradition is the bridge between past and future,” he says. “To understand and use tradition as the basis of urban design – that’s the basis of my life’s work.”
Egotistical art objects – the heart of modern and post-modern architecture – often destroy the fabric of cities. “We’re doing exactly the opposite,” David Lewis says. “We’re picking up threads and re-stitching them into the future.”
Abby Mendelson’s latest book, Ghost Dancer, a collection of short stories, is available at amazon and bn.com.
Captions:
David Lewis
The changing face of Homestead
Lewis at home
All photographs copyright Brian Cohen