The National Opera House
Pittsburgh, PA
Produced with Alex Almaguer in the studio class of Prof. Jerome Haferd at the Spitzer School of Architecture in 2023.
This project re-imaginines the National Opera House as an instrument that resonates out from and into the landscape.Beyond restoring the ornate Victorian exterior, we seek to transform the interior space into a resonating chamber that creates community, and celebrates the legacy of Black music in America.
The National Opera House has a rich history of Black artists and athletes who stayed there throughout the thirties and forties at a time when Jim Crow Laws forbid them elsewhere.
Woogie Harris, a local African American entrepeneur bought the property in the early thirties. He allowed Mary Cardwell Dawson, an African American Opera Singer to use the facility as both a music school and her head quarters for her National Negro Opera Company.
Woogie’s brother, Teenie Harris, was a wonderful photographer who took photos of the opera productions, both on stage and backstage.He also photographed live music, and did portraits for his community from the early 40’s through the 1970’s.
At time of rigid gender norms, Teenie Harris captured people that we might consider to be trans or non binary, challenging our mainstream conception of this time period.
His images serve as a record of black joy and creativity in Pittsburgh throughout this time period.
Teenie Harris’s photograph of the National Opera House, likely in the early 1940’s. A reimagining of the Opera house imagines the back wall being able to open up and inflate into a performance space.
conceptual study models representing how sound interacts with different materials
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conceptual study model understanding the Opera house as a musical instrument with a resonance chamber.
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For the first few years of its existence, the National Opera Company performed classic standard operas, such as Aida, and Madame Butterfly. After a few years, The National Opera Company chose a black authored opera, “The Ordering of Moses,” Written by Robert Nathaniel Dett..
The score is powerful, and you can hear influences from jazz, gospel infusing with the European style of opera.
This opera to me represents the mutability of music, which is constantly being changed and altered as it passes between cultures.
Music can thrive in the liminal space between two cultures. The National Opera House can be understood in a similar way.
conceptual study model understanding the Opera house as a musical instrument with a resonance chamber.
For the first few years of its existence, the National Opera Company performed classic standard operas, such as Aida, and Madame Butterfly. After a few years, The National Opera Company chose a black authored opera, “The Ordering of Moses,” Written by Robert Nathaniel Dett..
The score is powerful, and you can hear influences from jazz, gospel infusing with the European style of opera.
This opera to me represents the mutability of music, which is constantly being changed and altered as it passes between cultures.
Music can thrive in the liminal space between two cultures. The National Opera House can be understood in a similar way.
