Making a Collaborative Mobile Architectural Guidebook Application

Architectural guidebooks are among the most common and accessible instruments of architectural documentation. Cyrca Pittsburgh is a mobile architectural guidebook application that offers a new modality of architectural documentation to the city of Pittsburgh. The application is the illustrative product of a collaborative association of architects and designers with an architectural library and archives. In this article, a short survey of architectural guidebooks positions Cyrca Pittsburgh within the genre. The author discusses the making of Cyrca Pittsburgh in terms of its development and key components: its concept and project team, its origins in related projects, the collection of buildings and sites at its core, its content development, its technology and design, and its rollout and release.