MILL 19

An event plaza, a stormwater channel, and disturbance-adapted gardens define a reimagined public realm using reclaimed materials to celebrate industrial legacy.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

5 acres

2015-2023

Mill 19 is a living emblem of Pittsburgh’s transformation from its industrial steel-making past to a future of sustainable advanced manufacturing. Through a bold approach to adaptive reuse, the project viscerally interweaves new spaces for the Hazelwood Green community and the city’s robotics industry within the ruins of a decommissioned steel mill. The project welcomes the public through a series of linked exterior experiences framed between the 1,360-foot-long superstructure and three multi-tenant buildings sited within it. The visionary landscape celebrates experiential sustainable design strategies that support both ecological and social functions. Features made from reclaimed materials support public gathering, play, and reflection.

The project celebrates a bold approach to adaptive reuse by exposing the iconic ¼ mile-long steel skeleton as a new immersive public landscape and green infrastructure armature. The design team identified opportunities for deconstruction and preservation of the exoskeleton, scaling landscape interventions to celebrate the tectonics of the structure and provide opportunities to gather, explore, and relax amidst expansive wild rubble and wetland gardens. Salvaged steel from the exoskeleton was reassembled as custom furniture and site elements. The design repurposed the original concrete slab for stepped terraces, rail ties, and crushed “rubble” for informal surfacing materials and garden mulch. Concrete bunker blocks and reclaimed limestone boulders from an old retaining wall frame the water channel.

The closure of the last operating steel mill in Pittsburgh left a wake of uncertainty about the future for the community’s residents. Mill 19’s design approach was to provide a community-facing space that engages and welcomes the residents who have felt excluded from progress happening in recent years. The design integrates human-scale moments in a monumental setting, honoring industrial legacy while providing playful, immersive, and performative landscapes that offer a cleaner, safer environment for play and inhabitation. Through a community-engaged public art selection process, the design team listened to the struggles caused by changing economic conditions and provided art installations that uplifted communal ownership, healing, and pride in their community heritage at Mill 19.