Opening Doors, Connecting Creatives

Part community arts space, part education and workplace, the Pop District HQ is a boutique digital studio that produces content for clients while empowering a new generation of underrepresented Pittsburgh creatives. Across from the Andy Warhol Museum, the Pop District HQ is part of a developing public arts district along Pittsburgh’s North Shore.

Straddling the seventh floor of two buildings, the space is divided into “social” and “quiet” sides. The social side, where visitors enter, includes the reception area, a café, open office space, a multipurpose classroom, and a conference room. The “quiet” side focuses on production. It includes the TikTok Studio—a fully enclosed space with a three-sided, all white cyclorama soundstage, an extensive lighting grid, and acoustic treatment—as well as a smaller studio (with a green screen), editing suites, equipment storage, and administrative offices. This gives Warhol Academy Fellows and production staff ample capacity to push the bounds of visual expression while developing skills for the creative economy.

Paying tribute to Warhol’s factory, the interior design leans into the raw, industrial quality of the original structure, leaving its heavy wood beams, large rivets, historic brick walls, concrete columns, ducts, and electrical runs exposed. This backdrop is warmed by pops of color—notably, Warhol’s pink on yellow cow wallpaper. The “social” side of the building also enjoys the soft glow from a skylight a few stories above.

Like Warhol himself, who was known for nurturing the talents of diverse, young artists, the Pop District HQ promises to be the seed of a more equitable creative economy in Pittsburgh.