As a city central to the rise and fall of manufacturing, carbon extraction, energy, and labor struggles in North America, Pittsburgh provides an exemplary case for exploring architecture’s role in advancing energy transitions. This essay uses the work of a graduate design studio at Carnegie Mellon University to demonstrate how design-studio pedagogy might be framed through emerging discourse on a just transition and transition design. It speculates on how architecture can stage transformative practices that are at once social, local, and decarbonized, through three themes as design vignettes—transitioning means of production, transitioning infrastructures, and transitioning everyday life.

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