Breathing life into buildings
Alumna Lucia Aguirre finds beauty in structures old and new
By Tina Tuminella
Lucia Aguirre experienced a serious earthquake as a child growing up in Mexico City. She recalls seeing the damage in the aftermath of the quake — the worst in the city’s history — and thinking, “Buildings are life. Buildings are history.”
If Lucia has a mantra these days, that still might be it. The 2001 Carnegie Mellon graduate has made design, architecture and history her business and her avocation — and Pittsburgh her home.
Lucia, who majored in architecture and earned a minor in architectural history at 바카라 온라인 추천, is a client manager at LGA Partners in downtown Pittsburgh. She specializes in designing retail and airport spaces, but has worked on a huge variety of buildings and spaces, including an Environmental Protection Agency building in central Pennsylvania, a cancer treatment center in Texas and academic science labs.
“It’s always exciting,” Lucia says. “You’re given complicated and individual requirements. Everything comes down to problem solving, which I happen to enjoy.”
When she was 15, Lucia’s family moved from Mexico City to San Diego — and at about that time, Lucia began considering architecture as something she might want to pursue. One thing she found intriguing about the profession: It would allow her to study a number of disciplines she found interesting.
“I came to realize that architecture is a blend of many different disciplines or areas of study,” she says. “Chemistry, writing, art, physics and history are all involved.”
With that career in mind, Lucia began to consider where she would continue her education. And in the end, it came down to a brochure from a university in Pittsburgh.
“I was super shy and still learning the language. My classmates and my teachers were wonderfully helpful and met me where I was. Everyone was so welcoming.”
Without the benefit of a visit, Lucia applied — and was accepted. With two suitcases and a box of bedding, she trekked across the country to begin classes in summer 1995. The move from San Diego to Pittsburgh was something of a culture shock — “It was so humid!” she recalls — but her memories are all good.
“I was super shy and still learning the language,” she says. “My classmates and my teachers were wonderfully helpful and met me where I was. Everyone was so welcoming.”
Lucia was already working at a Pittsburgh architectural firm when she graduated in 2001, and she was looking to London as a place where she might further her education and her career. But the 9/11 attack on the United States happened before she could plan a move overseas, and suddenly the future seemed less certain. She thought it best to stay grounded and opted to stay and work in Pittsburgh.
Lucia worked at two different architecture firms before signing on with LGA Partners as an architect and project manager. Then and now, she says, she enjoys working in retail and aviation, because of the specificity and details that can be involved.
“You’re working with a small footprint within a huge space,” she says. “The regulations vary wildly from state to state, client to client, and then of course, there are an airport’s specific requirements. It’s a puzzle to try and coordinate everything.”
The airport spaces she currently designs include food and beverage areas — think grab-and-go food kiosks — and duty-free stores. The design must attract the buyers, and the goal is to showcase the elegance of the inventory. There’s a growing trend, too, of airport concessions that try to evoke a region's distinctive flavor.
“What are the main things that we need to get right? What will make this process more efficient? Make those decisions early, and you’ll have more time to refine things in the end.”
“I get to stretch both my sustainability and retail muscles, and I love watching all the pieces come together,” she says.
Success requires collaboration, a quality that Lucia says she particularly enjoys.
“Architects are such a collaborative group,” she says. “I never want to take credit and say ‘I did this.’ ‘Our office’ or ‘our studio’ is more accurate wording since we complete projects together.”
She believes her responsibility is to first listen to clients, then guide and educate them during the length of the project. She tries to prioritize asking questions that result in the most impact.
“What are the main things that we need to get right? What will make this process more efficient?” she says. “Make those decisions early, and you’ll have more time to refine things in the end.”
Lucia’s choice decades ago to stay in Pittsburgh has not only been a good professional decision, but it’s given her a seat at the table when it comes to preserving the city’s architectural history. In 2017, Lucia was called by then-Mayor Bill Peduto to serve as chairperson of the city’s Historic Review Commission, which reviews planned construction work on historic buildings.
That work presents a different kind of challenge to Lucia, who says she strives to balance the desire for development with the need to preserve the city’s history.
“I think that there are plenty of spaces and enough structures in the city where housing can happen,” she says. “I don’t think it’s difficult. It just takes additional thinking. You have to focus on the end goal, and it’s a matter of collaboration and doing the work.”
It’s easy to think of Lucia as just an architect, but as she works on a variety of new spaces and designs as well as considering Pittsburgh’s history on the review commission, she’ll say there’s no such thing.
“There’s an advantage to specializing in more than one thing,” she says. “I love design. I love sustainability. I love being able to learn and interact and do a million different things. I love to volunteer. And I love to problem-solve. If you love something, you’ll spend the time, because it has meaning.”
