Frick park laboratories | ecology & landscape studio

Pittsburgh, pa | 2013

This hillside is a natural park located at the southern end of Pittsburgh's main landmass. The goal for this project was to create a laboratory space for both local marine biologists to utilize as well as for students to attend for field trips. The Frick Park Hills aim to connect the steep disheveled hillsides to the Monongahela River while creating useful spaces for research, exploration, and discovery for visitors of all ages.

Lab Spaces: Each of these four labs located within the ribboned concrete structure are equipped with classroom spaces both indoors and outdoors. Each laboratory highlights a different ecology existing along the Monongahela: rocky freshwater, shallow sand, marshland and the current zone of uncontrolled water. Each laboratory is carefully designed to control the contained ecosystem while still allowing a constant flow of the river to interact variably with the ribboned structure.

Energy Use: This project uses a green roof system which is achieved through the use of nestling the structure into the hillside so as to continue the illusion of the a continuous landscape. This insulation method thrives off of the runoff water from the hills above and also produces a secondary level of interaction and learning for those visiting these traversable upper level gardens. In addition, an exploration was conducted in the ability to use water flows to harvest energy based on the fluctuating river heights. These structures would be lined with a series of hydro-turbines capable of harvesting up to an estimated gross potential of 1.3 GW of power annually based on the capacity factor of 0.3. This project could produce more energy through this method had it been placed along a different water source. The issue falls on the fact that this particular river does not produce enough flow to render the installation and upkeep cost-efficient.