Visionary architect Arthur Lubetz remembered for bold designs and bolder ideas

Arthur Lubetz, a Pittsburgh architect known for his bold innovative style, died July 4 at 85, leaving a legacy of notable works and visionary thinking.

In the course of his 58-year career, Lubetz defied convention through his signature use of vibrant colors, geometric designs, and elevated application of glass block and other common building materials.

The Jewish architect’s stand-out designs include the Glass Lofts in Lawrenceville with its tilted, lime-green façade; the Dalzell House residence in Point Breeze with its sculptural red wedge; the multi-hued Sharpsburg Community Library; and the light-filled Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh branch in Squirrel Hill, which earned an American Institute of Architects Honor Award in 2007.

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These works and others were featured in “Action, Ideas, Architecture: Arthur Lubetz/Front Studio” — the first solo exhibition of a local architect at Carnegie Museum of Art’s Heinz Architectural Center, in 2017.

One of Lubetz’s last projects was The Eddy, a luxury apartment complex in shades of red, green and blue on the Passaic River in Harrison, New Jersey.

Lubetz lived for most of his youth in Squirrel Hill. He established Lubetz Architects in Oakland in 1967 upon graduating from Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he cultivated an approach to design that integrated architecture, art and the psychology of how people react to the spaces they inhabit.

He taught for 25 years as an adjunct professor at CMU, where his elective course on the concept of incompleteness was popular with students, according to Steve Lee, the now-retired head of the CMU School of Architecture.

“The theory behind incompleteness is to create spaces that stir the imagination of the people who are going to occupy them,” said Lee, of Polish Hill. “It is about designing a space that allows the occupant to fill in the blanks.”

Lee first became aware of Lubetz’s work as an undergraduate at Carnegie Tech and got to know him when he later joined a firm located near Lubetz’s first studio at Bayard and Craig streets in Oakland.

“I would walk a block down the street to visit classmates who worked for Art and I got to know him and his art in that way,” said Lee, who regarded Lubetz’s buildings as “provocative” and a response to the “banal corporate architecture proliferating in Pittsburgh and other cities at that time.”

Lubetz chose color as a way to activate spaces, and used glass block, typically seen in basement windows, as an aesthetic element, Lee said, noting, as an example, the circular Fort Couch Tower in Bethel Park with its striking glass block façade.

Lubetz’s penchant for industrial building materials is evident in the Sharpsburg Community Library, which is clad in corrugated metal paneling in copper penny, silver, red, blue and green, and has concrete flooring and exposed roof trusses.

Color, Lubetz reportedly said at the time, is the easiest button to push to get an emotional response.

He completed that project while working as the Pittsburgh principal at Manhattan-based Front Studio Architects, a firm founded by merging his practice with that of two of his former CMU students Yen Ha and Michi Yanigashita in 2010.

Lubetz was with the firm at the time of his death.

A bout of multiple sclerosis in Lubetz’s early 40s affected his mobility but not his drive or creative spirit.

“He basically said ‘I’m not going to beat MS but it’s not going to beat me,’ which I really admired,” said Bob Johnson, one of Lubetz’s longtime friends.

“He would invite himself to parties I had when I was living on the Mexican War Streets, which meant getting himself up three flights of steps to the deck. It wasn’t easy, but he was courageous. I admired him.”

Lubetz was “kind of a curmudgeon … cantankerous,” Johnson said. “He was outspoken. He said what was on his mind and didn’t seem to care what people thought of him. But there was a humorous dimension to it as well.”

With the people in his life he was generous with his time and with supporting them in their goals, said Johnson, an artist-philosopher, who met Lubetz, by chance, at a Strip District restaurant 20 years ago, when a Styrofoam bicycle helmet and baby doll he’d left on his seat piqued Lubetz’s curiosity.

“When I returned from the men’s room, Art said, ‘Who are you and where are you from?’”

It was the beginning of a friendship that would include weekly dinners or lunches and lively discussions about a range of topics.

“We’d pick a book to read and then talk about it,” Johnson said. “I’d sometimes borrow books from his library, which was extensive. He was very well read.”

To call Lubetz larger than life is an understatement, said his widow, Deborah Kaplan Lubetz, whose first date with him — a 3 ½-hour lunch — became a 14-year adventure that included world travels and neighborhood jaunts.

“I fell in love with his vibrancy and vigor. He was passionate about creativity and making the world a more stimulating place, which is why ‘incompleteness’ fascinated him. Once something was complete it was boring.”

Despite his passion for his chosen field, Lubetz had many interests, and had he not become an architect he might have become an animal psychologist, Kaplan Lubetz mused. “He was fascinated by how animals communicate among themselves and with us.”

His beloved felines Za and Ha, named after the late Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, lived in the couple’s Oakland studio-home — often sprawling on Lubetz’s desk as he worked — along with Kaplan Lubetz’s golden retriever, Diva.

Lubetz also loved babies, his wife said. “Although he had no children, anywhere we went he would watch babies and be totally charmed by them and interested in their behavior.”

“A lot of people didn’t see that side of him.”

Lubetz held leadership and board service roles over the years in several organizations, including Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, Environmental Design Collaborative, Steel Heritage Task Force, Kuuma Trusts, ECCO Foundation and Preservation Pittsburgh.

A memorial service is planned for this fall. PJC

Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.