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Riverfront consultant has international reputation
Wednesday, February 23, 2000 By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Alex Krieger, charged with creating a bold vision and a comprehensive development plan for Pittsburgh's riverfront, is well-known among the international architecture and planning community as an outspoken advocate of city living.
Visit the Chan Krieger & Associates Web site for background on the firm, plus details of recent projects and selected work.
"We're at the end of the suburban century," and at a time when cities are seeing significant reinvestment, said Krieger, who also is chairman of the Department of Urban Planning & Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Chan Krieger & Associates, co-founded in 1984 by Krieger and Lawrence Chan, has produced master plans for sections of Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, Minneapolis and other cities.
For the Cincinnati riverfront, the firm has produced an urban plan and new bridge design as part of a complete reconstruction of an interstate highway along the edge of downtown.
This isn't Krieger's first Pittsburgh project; in 1995, he produced a strategic plan for Mt. Lebanon's Washington Road business district.
Beyond his own projects, Krieger has an especially broad understanding of waterfront development around the world.
In the fall, he organized an international conference at Harvard on "Waterfronts in Post Industrial Cities," during which eight cities outside the United States, including Amsterdam, Bilbao and Genoa, gave presentations on how they are confronting and directing change along their waterfronts.
One of the revelations of the conference was that "to compete globally involves in many instances recasting, rather than more narrowly preserving, a city's waterfront image," the firm wrote last month in its response to the task force's request for design qualifications.
Cities also are learning to think long term and "not take the first developer that comes along."
Krieger said he isn't bothered by having to work around existing elements and projects under way here, such as the new stadiums and the riverfront park being planned along the North Shore by EDAW, the Alexandria, Va.-based landscape architecture firm.
"We don't require a clean slate," said Krieger, who hadn't seen EDAW's plan and thus couldn't comment on its specifics. But, he added, "We hope the constraints are not so far along that nothing can change."
Krieger is known for including the public in the planning process, which is one of his charges here.
Krieger and project manager Alan Mountjoy will be responsible for building a comprehensive riverfront development planning team that includes an urban planner, an environmental planner, a landscape architect, an artist, a civil engineer, a traffic engineer and a community participation facilitator.
Krieger, a fellow in the American Institute of Architects, received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Cornell in 1974 and earned a master of city planning in urban design from Harvard in 1977. He has taught at Harvard since 1978.
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