CONTEXT - Spring 2016

SPRING 2016

SOCIAL JUSTICE + DESIGN Equity community development roundtable

Innovation tactical urbanism

Practice the Philadelphia rowhouse

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Spring 2016 – IN THIS ISSUE We view social justice in terms of design and ask a simple question, can good design help solve problems of equity and community development?

FEATURES 14

EQUITY: The Intersection of Community Development and Design Five Philadelphia Community Development Corporations discuss economic development, gentrification, tactical urbanism, creative placemaking, and how they see the future of community development and design.

Groundbreaking of the NKCDC Orinoka Civic House designed by Jibe Architects

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INNOVATION: Tactical Urbanism in Underserved Communities Sally Harrison explores the possibility of tactical urbanism projects being the catalyst for jump-starting larger social justice goals in underserved communities.

DEPARTMENTS 7 EDITOR’S LETTER 8 COMMUNITY 12 UP CLOSE 27 OPINION 30 DESIGN PROFILES 37 INDEx TO ADvERTISERS

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ON THE COVER

PRACTICE: The Rowhouse: Reimagined and Relevant The Philadelphia rowhouse remains an affordable and sustainable option for home buyers.

ON THE COVER: PEC Bigham Leatherberry Wise Place Client: People’s Emergency Center Community Development Corporation Architect: Digsau Photo: Halkin Mason Photography

CONTEXT is published by 5950 NW 1st Place, Gainesville, FL 32607 (800) 369-6220, www.naylor.com.

Publisher Tom Schell, Group Publisher Jack Eller, Sales and Project Manager David Freeman, Editor Ann DeLage, Marketing Nancy Taylor, Book Leader Krys D’Antonio, Designer GK DS, Account Representatives Lou Brandow, Ralph Herzberg, Phillip Maxwell, Tyler Pierce, Amanda Rowluk, Chris Zabel, Brian Zeig The The opinions expressed in this – or the representations made by advertisers, including copyrights and warranties, are not those of the editorial staff, publisher, AIA Philadelphia, or AIA Philadelphia’s Board of Directors. All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or whole without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Postmaster: send change of address to AIA Philadelphia, 1218 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107.

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AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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A C H I E V E

N E W

Y O U R

V I S I O N

2016 BOARD OF DIRECTORS Denise Thompson, AIA, President Frank Grauman, FAIA, President-Elect Troy Hannigan, Assoc. AIA, Treasurer James W. Rowe, AIA, Past President | Secretary Karen Blanchard, AIA, Chapter Director Kiki Bolender, AIA, Chapter Director Kira Broecker, AIA, Chapter Director Jeffrey Krieger, AIA, Chapter Director Brian Szymanik, AIA, Chapter Director Kelly Vresilovic, AIA, LEED AP, Chapter Director Alesa Rubendall, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Chapter Director Catherine (Katie) Broh, AIA, LEED AP, Chapter Director Paul Avazier, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, NCARB, Chapter Director John B Campbell, AIA, ARIAS, RIBA, LEED AP, Chapter Director Jeff Pastva, AIA, AIA PA Director Robert C. Kelly, AIA, AIA PA Director

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| context | AIA Philadelphia

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EDITOR’S LETTER

By Sally HarriSon, AIA, AssocIAte Professor, temPle UnIversIty tyler school of Art And elizaBetH Miller, execUtIve dIrector commUnIty desIgn collABorAtIve Context gUest edItors

Design & Social Justice: Equity, Access, Innovation, Practice and Public Interest

2016…It is nearly 50 years since civil rights leader Whitney M. Young, Jr. addressed the AIA Convention. He excoriated our profession for distinguishing itself in “thunderous silence” and inaction on social issues, especially in the face of profound degradation of urban neighborhoods while most of our country thrived. His speech hit home. It was a call to activism for architects and our allied professions, and helped advance work already percolating in universities and ad hoc design groups around the country. Soon community design centers were funded and charged to offer professional design services; charrettes became the crucible for dynamic engaged design; and our partnerships with the newly emerging community development corporations were formed.

Today we are experiencing an exciting second growth in our profession’s commitment to design practice in the public interest. The Context editorial board chose “Design and Social Justice” as the focus of this issue in order to examine the evolving role of architects, and to highlight new models of community-engaged practice in our region. In Philadelphia – the seat of American democracy – there are vibrant coalitions of “old heads” and young advocates comprising not just architects, but also landscape architects, planners and artists – all working hand in glove with communities in true co-design partnerships.

The issue reports on the Philadelphia Center for Architecture and Design and its affiliates the Community Design Collaborative (now in its 25th year) and the Charter School for Architecture and Design – two organizations engaged in on-going outreach to our broader community.

We profile outstanding social impact projects of chapter firms that demonstrate the commitment to building innovative, humane, and beautiful work within the framework of limited budgets and complex processes.

And we reflect on Philadelphia’s most heralded polymath, Ben Franklin, who saw the purpose of design innovation as means of broadly advancing democracy through the “cultural commons.”

Our feature articles cast a wide net. We look at “Design and Social Justice” through the lens of Equity, Innovation, and Practice. We engage the next generation of leaders in the community development world in a roundtable discussion on the future of their sector, asking what it needs from designers. We look at how potent, innovative small-scale tactical interventions can catalyze social activity in neighborhoods awaiting long-term change. We zero in on design practice and the row house, Philadelphia’s affordable housing typology that is sustainable, livable, and remarkably amenable to creative interpretation.

Since 1968 we have made progress in engaging our profession in a quest to build a just city. But there is so much more to be done. ■

Whitney M. Young, 1968 AIA Convention keynote speaker.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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COMMUNITY

Dear Friends, Members, and Colleagues: AIA National Convention will be here in Philadelphia in a few weeks. The Center for Architecture has been refreshed and rebranded, and has been renamed the Center / Architecture + Design. We have a new exhibit gallery that is hosting our inaugural exhibit “Looking Back, Pushing Forward: Significant Moments in Philadelphia Architecture.” And our beloved AIA Bookstore is re-opening with a new look and exciting new product. It’s been a busy year. All of the above and more would not have been possible without the 70+ AIA members who volunteered their talents and time to work with staff to successfully host AIA Convention 2016 and make the Center / Architecture + Design the hub for the design community in Philadelphia. A special shout out to our Volunteer of the Year, Soha St. Juste, who served as the Chair of the Convention Steering Committee; thank you Soha for your leadership and support.

Prior to becoming Executive Director of AIA Philadelphia and the Center, I was Executive Director of the Fairmount Community Development Corporation. I spent a lot of time talking and planning with developers, community leaders, residents and local business owners about how we could equitably develop and improve the neighborhood. These conversations continue in this issue of Context that focuses on social justice and design equity.

When I interviewed for this position two years ago, I asked the interview committee how they saw AIA Philadelphia and the Center for Architecture being involved in the dialogue around the development of neighborhoods in Philadelphia. My experience in community development taught me that one of the biggest conversations about the built environment in Philadelphia for the next fifteen years will be about the equitable development of neighborhoods. Compared to most cities similar in size, Philadelphia has an opportunity to successfully encourage growth and manage it so that it does not displace low and fixed income households. I’m proud that the Center / Architecture + Design is a vehicle, both organizational and as a physical hub, to encourage and support those conversations and initiatives that are focused on equitable growth for all, such as the Healthy Rowhouse Project.

Lastly, thank you to our editors on this important issue – Beth Miller and Sally Harrison. The Community Design Collaborative is the best public interest design organization in the country. AIA and Centers of Architecture colleagues from around the country tell me frequently that we are so lucky to have the Community Design Collaborative in Philadelphia. I couldn’t agree more. We are grateful to have them here in Philadelphia because of all of the great work they do, but we are also thrilled that they are a critical part of AIA and Center / Architecture + Design community.

Meet up at the Refresh Lounge!

Our home, the Center for Architecture and Design (Center), is conveniently located just across Arch Street, mere steps away from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The Center will serve as the AIA Philadelphia hub for Convention week with a bevy of activities offering networking and social opportunities as well as spaces to relax and recharge your mind, body, and electronics.

Be sure to check out the AIA Philadelphia Welcome Guide available for FREE at the AIA Philadelphia desk at the Convention Center as well as at the Center. This Guide features walking tours and a special restaurant list curated

by Tony Naccarato–extra thanks to O’Donnell & Naccarato for helping us bring this awesome guide to fruition.

Jacobs FREE Coffee Every Day Presented by Jacobs Global Building Systems Wednesday, May 18 – Saturday, May 21 6am – 3pm

Sincerely,

Loewen Happy Hour Presented by Loewen Windows Thursday, May 19 and Friday, May 20 5pm- 7pm Discounted drinks, complimentary light fare, and live music 8

SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

pHOtO: UlrIK JANtzeN

COMMUNITY

Shildan Opening Party Presented by Shildan Wednesday, May 18, 5pm – 7pm Complimentary Drinks and Light Fare

Wallace Roberts & Todd Napkin Sketch Showcase Presented by Wallace Roberts & Todd LLC Open Daily

Saint Gobain Parklet Design Competition Presented by Saint Gobain Thursday, May 19 and Friday, May 20 12pm – 7pm

AIA Bookstore Open Daily 6am – 7pm

On May 9, just before AIA Convention 2016 kicks off, the Center is pleased to welcome Bjarke Ingels, founder of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as this year’s Louis I. Kahn Memorial honoree. He is the architect of Philadelphia’s forthcoming 1200 Intrepid at the Navy Yard, as well as 2 World Trade Center in Manhattan.

The event will take place from 6:30 - 8:00 pm at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Tickets are available through the calendar listing on the Center’s website, www.philadelphiacfa.org.

FREE Charging Stations Presented by Corian Available daily

FREE Architecture Exhibition “Looking Back, Pushing Forward: Significant Moments in Philadelphia Architecture” Presented by ARC Printing and J2 Design Partnership Open Daily 6am – 7pm

Philadelphia’s Design Advocacy Group (DAG) is proud to collaborate with the Center for Architecture and Design. Since 2001 this all-volunteer organization of 1,200-plus design professionals and dedicated urbanists has advocated for excellence in the architecture and physical planning and has provided a lively forum for public discussion.

DAG hosts free, monthly and well-attended public meetings at the Center on issues relating to the built environment and public realm.

Recent topics have included the ambitious redevelopment plans for the Sharswood section of North Philadelphia, the Central Delaware riverfront, and key commercial corridors such as East Market Street, Washington Avenue and Lancaster Avenue.

It’s not just talk. DAG testifies before City Council and government agencies, publishes frequently and maintains an active online presence.

Want to get involved? Learn more at designadvocacy.org or facebook.com/designadvocacy.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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COMMUNITY

Resurrecting a historic lot.

“THIS WAS SUCH A LEARNING ExPERIENCE FOR US. THE DESIGN PROCESS WAS A TEACHING TOOL THAT HELPED ME DO SOME SERIOUS ORGANIzING. IT IMPROVED MY CONNECTION WITH RESIDENTS WHO DID NOT LIVE ON MY BLOCk.” Joyce Smith, Community Development Coordinator, Viola Street Residents Association

Greening a vacant lot.

Lighting up Fabric Row.

“BY BRINGING EVERYONE TOGETHER, WE CREATED AWARENESS ABOUT FABRIC ROW AND WHAT IT NEEDED. YOU GAVE US THE TOOLS TO SECURE THE FUNDING.” Mike Harris, Executive Director, South Street Headhouse Square District The Community Design Collaborative provides pro bono design services to nonprofits in greater Philadelphia, creates engaging volunteer opportunities for design professionals, and raises awareness about the importance of design in revitalizing communities. For 25 years, the Collaborative has worked with architects, engineers, and other design professionals to share their skills, make community service a lifelong part of their practice, and collaborate with Philadelphians who are making a difference.

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“THE COLLABORATIVE DESIGN GRANT PROVIDED AN OPPORTUNITY TO ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY… THE DESIGN PROCESS TOLD THE COMMUNITY, ‘WE WANT TO LISTEN TO YOU. WE WANT TO BE PARTNERS.” Sister Rose Martin, Executive Director, Hope Partnership for Education.

“THE SYNERGY OF OUR WORk TOGETHER IS STILL PROPELLING US. IT PUTS YOU IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT POSITION. YOU’VE DONE YOUR HOMEWORk, YOU’VE WORkED WITH PROFESSIONALS.” Pam Carunchio, Director of Adult Education and Strategic Partnerships, Hope Partnership for Education.

COMMUNITY CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL FOR ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN

pHOtO: MArK GArVIN

sible solutions and defining logics for which paths to pursue. This is revolutionary to public education; it’s about students learning the 21st Century skills of creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication.”

Andrew, a practicing architect, has taught at CHAD for the past seven years. Before that, When you’re the designer and the user, how does one inform the other? Sakou kromah lived this question for a day at the Community Design Collaborative’s Child’s Play Design Charrette. This topic, re-animating play spaces for family child care providers, challenged Sakou. He knows this kind of space all too well. How can you possibly make them better?

His creative solution, The Trellis Tunnel, took two well-known urban elements, garden trellises and cyclone fences, and wed them into a new type of play space for children. At the end of the day, Sakou’s proposal was heralded as one of the best ideas in the room.

Here’s the surprise: Sakou is just 17. He is a Junior at The Charter High School for Architecture + Design (CHAD) in Philadelphia. Eight CHAD students spent the day working alongside architects, landscape architects, community activists and city officials. They did better than fine; they did great.

Why? Because these students having been studying architecture and design at CHAD for three years. In addition to studying the traditional subjects, design is a daily class at this unique school. Founded in 1999 by AIA Philadelphia as the host legacy project for AIA Convention 2000, CHAD was first high school for architecture and design in the nation. Since then, CHAD’s alumni have continued on to college and design careers around the country.

This is an even more remarkable achievement when you consider the students’ often humble origins.

CHAD’s students are inner city, urban youths who enter the school through a lottery.

CHAD is a tuition free, public school of choice with no application requirements. Students often enter the school with little knowledge about design careers and professions. But they like to draw or make stuff. Four years later, they’re college bound, usually with financial support.

“Design is becoming a hot topic in education,” explains Andrew Phillips, CHAD’s Director of Design Education and Design Department Chair. “Suddenly, everyone is recognizing that something happens in the design process that opens the mind to possibilities. It’s not about finding an answer anymore. It’s not the simple ‘right or wrong’ response we experienced in our own secondary educations. It’s about exploring many pos-

he taught at The University of Pennsylvania for 15 years. He and his colleagues have shaped CHAD’s design curriculum into the forefront of design education for k-12 education.

Design, in terms of social justice, is often thought of in terms of the resulting products or access to design services. Design as educational social justice changes the equation.

It opens skill and professions to underserved constituencies. It equips students with abilities to become economically mobile. Design puts a student’s future into his or own hands. It’s theirs to make.

Andrew Phillips is an award-winning architect, an educator and currently the Director of Design Education at the Charter High School for Architecture and Design.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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The Community Design Collaborative

BY TODD WOODWARD, AIA

Child’s play Charrette 2015.

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SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

pHOtO: MArK GArVIN

Readers of Context will know that the Up Close column has always been reserved for a profile of a person who is making significant contributions to the built environment. For this issue of Context, which addresses themes of social justice and design equity, we present a first for the Up Close column, a profile of an organization. More than any one person, the extended professional family that makes up the nonprofit Community Design Collaborative has had an impact on these issues in our city. The influence of the Collaborative is not only on the design of the physical fabric of the city, though it can certainly be seen there. Though more difficult to quantify, the most beneficial effects of the work of the Collaborative accrue to the countless professional volunteers, nonprofit clients, and members of the general public who have participated in a Collaborative Design Grant.

The Collaborative, which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2016, is as much about people as it is about good design. And we – architects, AIA members, design professionals – are all a part of the Collaborative.

There are many design centers located in cities and at universities across the country, but the Community Design Collaborative is unique in both its approach and founding. AIA Philadelphia is one of the few local AIA chapters to have founded and incubated a design center. While the

pHOtO: MArK GArVIN

UP CLOSE

Community Design Collaborative Staff, Clockwise from left: robin Kohles, Heidi Segall levy, elizabeth Miller, linda Dottor, Jessica Scipione, Danielle parnes, and Alexa Bosse.

Collaborative’s approach to design brings a distinctly Philadelphia brand of Quakerly consensus building to all of its work, its model is one that more AIA Chapters can and should explore.

Focusing on early stage design assistance to nonprofit organizations, the Collaborative has assisted hundreds of nonprofit clients of all types and sizes and has a number of notable built works to its credit. The Collaborative has leveraged the skills of its volunteer design professionals in service to community revitalization. In 2015 alone, the Collaborative coordinated 150 volunteer design professionals to deliver more than $900,000 and over 8,000 hours in pro bono design services and programs through 25 Design Grants and 24 advisory referrals serving 49 community-based nonprofits in Philadelphia. Through its innovative community-engaged design initiative, Infill Philadelphia launched in 2005, the organization has been a leader in bringing thoughtful design thinking to bear on a number of significant urban issues including affordable housing, commercial corridors, food access, industrial sites, storm water management, and play space.

As Beth Miller, the Executive Director of the Collaborative, has written elsewhere: Community design is the process of establishing early and active partnerships between design professionals, community residents, and institutions. In order to serve the public good, it is vital for citizens to

transforming Vacant Schools Charrette 2014.

participate in discussions, identify opportunities, deliberate with stakeholders, establish priorities, create solutions, and share responsibility.

Grassroots participation requires more time and tending to than top down remedies do, but it is essential. Without citizens at the table, all the good will and best intentions of the public sector, philanthropy, universities, and design professionals will be insufficient. When we collaborate, we share power and earn trust.

Perhaps even more important than the successes that are easy to document, are the connections that have been made – among design professional of all disciplines; between the design community and the community at large; between nonprofit organizations and the myriad intermediaries, city agencies, and foundations that invest in their work. It is difficult to say just how many projects and programs have benefitted from these connections that are a direct result of the Collaborative’s process and approach. To speak from my own volunteer experience, my professional life has been greatly enriched by the chance to work for groups like the Overbrook Environmental Education Center, Spiral Q Puppet Theater, and Laurel Hill Cemetery. The Collaborative’s consistent message of inclusion, understanding all viewpoints, and supporting quality design has made Philadelphia a better city in which to practice architecture.

Many individuals have greatly contributed to the success and growth of the Collaborative, but on the joint occasion of the 25th Anniversary and the AIA Convention in Philadelphia, two AIA members deserve special mention. Alice Berman, AIA, was a member of the founding group of design professionals and has served on the organization’s Board of Directors from the very beginning. Heidi Segall Levy, AIA, Director of Design Services at the Collaborative for more than a decade, has taken her interest in community-based design and turned it into a model of alternative architectural practice. AIA Philadelphia, and all of its members, should be proud of the work that the Collaborative continues to do on behalf of design and our city. If you haven’t recently volunteered with the Collaborative, or participated in a Collaborative program or event, I encourage you to get involved! ■ Todd Woodward, AIA is the Co-Chair of the Editorial Board of Context and a member of the Community Design Collaborative’s Advisory Council.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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EQUITY: The Intersection of Community Development and Design

Participants: Troy Hannigan, Assoc. AIA, Program Director, Community Ventures Beth McConnell, Policy Director, Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations (PACDC) Angel Rodriguez, Vice President Community and Economic Development, Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM) Shanta Schachter, Deputy Director, New kensington Community Development Corporation (NkCDC) Kira Strong, Vice President Community and Economic Development, People’s Emergency Center (PEC)

Context Moderators: Harris Steinberg, FAIA, Executive Director, Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel University Elizabeth Miller, Executive Director, Community Design Collaborative rendering of NKCDC’s Orinoka Civic House designed by Jibe Design.

14 SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

reNDerING: JIBe DeSIGN

On January 15, 2016, the Community Design Collaborative convened a conversation among next gen leaders from five Philadelphia Community Development Corporations (CDCs), to share their perspectives on the intersection of development, design, and social justice for Context. The roundtable was hosted by Drexel University.

Context: What factors inform your community and economic development work in Philadelphia?

Strong: At PEC, housing projects are a mechanism for a larger ripple effect on a neighborhood that has been long disinvested. Design can stimulate pride in place and thinking about what market could exist.

We’ve typically worked with smaller and newer firms to bring different ways of thinking to affordable housing.

Schachter: At NkCDC, our work is a catalyst, and other investments follow. We want to model the expectation for the rest of the buildings.

We listen to the community and are often surprised about how design can meet community needs. Our projects are usually six or seven years in the making. You need a full design package and the community behind you before you can actually finance a project. It’s a backwards process.

Rodriguez: In community development, “design” is just another word for “collaboration.” It’s only going to happen if you listen to the community. Design is about improving the quality of life, but also protecting that quality of life so no one is displaced. Before the mid ’90s, architects were a part of the APM team, but we weren’t asking “What’s the impact on the issues of walkability, transit-oriented design, or sustainability?”

Hannigan: The Philadelphia market in the past ten years has shifted how CDCs see design. At Community Ventures, we’re no longer building in a vacuum. Now we’re using design to have a much larger impact.

Strong: Design can jumpstart, energize, and set a tone. Philly needs its design sensibility to be ahead of the market for both for-profit and nonprofit developers.

Context: What about gentrification?

McConnell: Most of the city is not experiencing gentrification, but faces a lack of equitable development. The answer to gentrification is not less investment; it’s more – in the people the private market doesn’t serve. Tools like the Land Bank create mixedincome communities – to acquire and dispose of land to improve neighborhoods for low- and moderate-income housing, and commercial space.

Schachter: At NkCDC we walk a fine line between gentrification and equitable development. In the Sommerset area, the real estate prices were declining and affordable housing stock was deteriorating.

Nobody was investing in home repairs, because then you’re under water immediately. Once we came in with a neighborhood plan, prices stabilized. Property owners could afford to make those repairs.

By the time we broke ground for the Orinoka Mills Civic House, prices doubled. How do you do enough, without doing too much?

Strong: Construction has boomed in Philly. Yet, per unit, affordable housing becomes high dollar venture. It doesn’t need to be.

Clockwise from left: Harris Steinberg, Angel rodriguez, Beth McConnell, Shanta Schachter, Kira Strong, troy Hannigan, and elizabeth Miller

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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Context: There’s a lot of funding nationally for tactical urbanism – smaller-scale pop-ups and participatory design.

Do they help or hinder your work?

ApM’s paseo Verde designed by Wrt.

transition for how low-income families get higher-paying jobs.

Historically, given how much money nonprofits in the neighborhood of Eastern North have brought to the table over ten years, the median income for residents hasn’t moved much at all.

McConnell: Can we create a way for the private market-rate developers to invest in fixing up those homes with collapsing roofs and dilapidated facades? In Philadelphia, the Basic Systems Repair Program (BSRP) has a four-year waiting list. BSRP will fix your plumbing, heater, or roof, but it won’t make anything look nice.

They’ll knock down a wall to fix a problem but won’t rebuild the wall. We need to be thoughtful about limited resources serving the maximum number of people, but do more than just stop the bleeding.

Rodriquez: APM’s Paseo Verde is an achievement, but how does that translate? We built a state-of-the-art building, but just across the street are old row homes in need of the BSRP. BSRP – a real meat-and-potatoes program that quickly builds equity and allows people to stabilize – is the type of policy we need 16

SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

Hannigan: A series of buildings at Germantown and Lehigh have a fantastic mural by Haas & Hahn. We’re asking how that investment impacts the future: reutilizing the second and third floors and the street-level commercial spaces. How can we work with the mural as we revitalize the buildings? Is that a positive for attracting reinvestment in that corridor or a negative?

McConnell: This comes up in commercial corridors a lot: a bit of tension around economic development.

Rodriguez: I’m not a fan of dive-bombing in with outside investment – you’re in and then you’re out. I push sustainability: the infrastructure and the systems that benefit all neighborhood residents.

Strong: A one-off can work. In our neighborhood planning process, we heard that community members felt there wasn’t a neutral mechanism for communication. One successful tactical urbanism project engaged local youth through Public Workshop to create a huge bulletin board on a vacant lot on our commercial corridor. Because of the youth involvement and the visibility, business owners and residents were inspired to get involved.

Rodriguez: What’s important is that afterwards, there was a CDC for local businesses and residents follow up with. PEC is a part of the community, so there’s accountability and it’s sustainable.

Schachter: Visibility and social marketing alone don’t work.

Sometimes you need a little pop-up to do something to draw investment.

Context: How can creative-placemaking, where artists are involved in community planning, help create the new narrative of hope Kira mentioned earlier?

Rodriguez: The heart of the conversation is engaging the community in revitalizing under-utilized assets. These could be a vacant lot, a co-working space, a maker’s place, or a commercial kitchen. Designing the space – its usability, walkability, and lighting – addresses the cohesive nature that activates the site and dissipates the crime. We set the table. They provide the food.

Schachter: Outsiders can also help facilitate the process. Art is about creating a safe place for conversations about things that are

reNDerING: Wrt

to enhance. The City should invest taxes from new market rate development into BSRP. Strong: We all operate at a granular level of meeting intense need. We are also figuring out how to cast a narrative that creates hope. What’s shifting citywide isn’t just need, but the community plan. An aspirational process – like the Community Design Collaborative’s visioning – can bring in what a community hasn’t had the bandwidth for.

reNDerING: Wrt

On a recent affordable housing development, the project was value engineered to the point where our design team said, “We can’t work with this any more.” That was tough. I don’t know how to make our projects any sparser. I want a building that the community has pride in, that really knits the fabric back together on a heavily traveled residential strip. There’s an education required to work within this rigid system of affordable housing.

Rodriquez: It depends on scope and scale. Major developments are great for Philadelphia but in a lot of areas we don’t plan the

difficult but are needed for an outcome. Sometimes that’s something staff alone can’t do.

Strong: PEC’s Neighborhood Time Exchange in partnership with Mural Arts, the City and Broken City Lab was a model to activate a vacant storefront. In exchange for paid studio residency, artists from West Philly to Egypt came in for three-month periods and responded to community-generated requests. Community members saw tangible results for a need they’d expressed within that time.

Hannigan: As a small nonprofit developer, we’re supporting community partners. On a recent tax credit project, a local business offered to feed our construction workers onsite. This translates to more economic benefit from the product. At Ingersoll Commons, we worked with Parks and Rec on creating a new park that’s adding a public amenity for all residents.

Context: At the national level, new funding streams like ArtPlace aim to change behavior among federal, state, and local agencies that fund different projects separately, not collectively.

From a policy perspective, do you see this type of funding that integrates arts into the design and planning process driving change at the local level?

McConnell: I don’t think we have a citywide strategy on this.

There is opportunity to create partnerships with public, private, and nonprofit entities locally. Under the City’s new Division of Planning and Development, PACDC could play a role by convening the actors to have those conversations.

Rodriguez: The City’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Creative Economy and our Office of Sustainability are steps in the right direction. There are more design and design-oriented professionals in government hammering away at that. I also see the shift in foundations – large national funders like ArtPlace or the knight Foundation have RFPs that require the process of planning, design, and assembling cross-sector teams. You can’t get anything done without collaboration.

Context: Where do you see the field ten years from now? What is the future of community development and design?

Rodriguez: Philadelphia’s low-income neighborhoods live in the shadows. We need to acknowledge how power politics here are economic. This impacts where development happens. Part of it is equitable access – like cutting the wait time for the City’s Licenses and Inspections. We were so far behind. The next wave is corporate responsibility from those that benefit from City investment.

McConnell: Corporate partners can and should be doing much, much more. For example, the City’s CDC Tax Credit Program, a ten-year private-public partnership out of the City’s Bureau of Revision of Taxes (BRT) and Commerce Department, is absolutely vital. For some CDCs, it’s the sole source of funding for staffing economic development and corridor management work. Smaller projects and interventions – like

Community Ventures' Ingersoll Commons designed by KSK Architects.

the Commerce Department’s Storefront Improvement Program, which provides critical matching grants for simple upgrades to façades –have huge impact on corridor after corridor. But it takes CDCs with capacity and resources to build relationships with business owners and guide them through why these improvements matter – to their store, corridor, and neighborhood.

Nonprofit community developers are constituency builders. You don’t know what good design is – until you actually see it. If more people are engaged and find small ways to participate, they become advocates for equitable development that gets integrated and prioritized in the neighborhood plan. Public education plays a huge role.

Rodriguez: Business is about relationships. CDCs have to explain their value proposition and embed it into the system. Innovative design can improve the quality of life for everybody in the neighborhood. That’s our responsibility. ■ AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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BY SALLY HARRISON

Tactical urbanism has been around as long as there have been cities.

The street vendor, the child at play, the graffiti artist, the guerrilla gardener – all have taken their corner of the city and reinvented it for their needs. Without self-celebration these urban tacticians have used the city opportunistically, finding unclaimed space, using available materials and bending the rules to accommodate needs unmet by the powers that plan and organize their environment.

Perhaps inspired by these grassroots actions, the tactical urbanism movement has gained cachet in the design world in recent years. Ad hoc parks with hammocks, shipping containers and painted pallets, beer gardens, parking days and dinners in white have proliferated in the city centers and in hip neighborhoods, offering informal social gathering places for a young middle class population. Seeing tactical urbanism’s success, a mantra of “quicker, cheaper, lighter” has been eagerly adopted by developers seeking to promote gentrifying neighborhoods, and by the public sector looking for effective and efficient ways to energize underutilized public space.

The impulse to make the city more accessible is certainly laudable – but for whom? In parts of the city where crime and poverty isolate residents and erode bonds of community, building a strong public realm is perhaps a matter of greater urgency. Among designers who work with underserved communities, there is a keen interest in using the beneficial aspects of tactical urbanism to jump-start larger social justice goals that are often embedded in slowly evolving neighborhood plans.

Targeted, short-term spatial interventions can reenergize urban systems enervated by disinvestment, especially where there is on-theground presence of community organizations that understand the dynamics of the neighborhood and can provide broad vision.

Several examples of this work in the Philadelphia area illustrate how “pinpricks of change”, as Jaime Lerner would have it, can deftly penetrate the surface of the complicated problems facing poor neighborhoods, by expanding the reach of community institutions, empowering young people as agents of change, and revitalizing major civic spaces.

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Neighborhood children enjoy their new library books in the logan parklet on a quiet afternoon.

pHOtO: pHIlANOMA

INNOVATION: TACTICAl URbANISm IN UNDERSERVED COmmUNITIES

A lively performance on the sloped lawn of the logan library gathers an audience that fills the parklet and spills out on the sidewalk.

PHilaNOMA and the Logan Parklet Neighborhood institutions are often stretched beyond capacity in their mission to support underserved communities; undertaking non-essential community-building is often simply impossible.

When they collaborate, small interventions can have broader impact. Such is the case of the Logan Branch Library. It became the “host” of the Logan Parklet an award-winning structure designed and built by a cadre of PhilaNOMA architects led by then president Marguerite Anglin, and Michael Spain. Anglin credits Tya Winn, a trained architect and an AmeriCorps fellow from the Logan CDC, with the vision to partner with the Library, to pursue a Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities (MOTU) Parklet Pilot Program grant, to initiate a kickstarter campaign, and to manage construction, events, and maintenance.

The parklet occupied just two parking spaces, but its impact was much greater. It both animated the space between the curb and the rather staid, set back library building, and extends the building’s reach outward. Acupuncture-like it stimulated the community’s sense of ownership of its public space and institution.

The elegant, deployable structure is designed in modules with three lightly programmed spaces: for reading and working; for performance, teaching, and expression; and for lounging. On any regular afternoon young people found time to do homework on the fabricated tables and salvaged tree-stump stools, and gather to write messages on the large chalkboard on the floor of the central bay. Picnics, movie nights, storytelling, history plays, school classes, and puppet shows were organized with the structure as a frame and stage, laying claim to an expanded public realm.

The Logan Parklet had two vigorous seasons of use in 2012 and 2013. But after the Logan CDC, its chief steward, closed down, the structure was put in storage, still in excellent condition.

Temporality is in the DNA of tactical urbanism most especially where resources are scarce – and Winn and PhilaNOMA are at work finding ways to support the library’s capacity to sustain this small but catalytic intervention. Says Anglin, the pride engendered

by Logan Parklet has already done important work in communitybuilding – now it awaits a new life.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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Play Lancaster Alex Gilliam knows kids to be instinctive tacticians. His organization, Public Workshop, teaches young people skills in building and designing urban space, and he calls them “Building Heroes”. At the invitation of the People’s Emergency Center (PEC), Gilliam and his team are participating in an initiative that is growing in increments on Lancaster Avenue, a reemerging commercial corridor in West Philadelphia.

Called “Play Lancaster”, the project began with an empty lot that seemed perfect for a playground. After consulting with PEC over concerns related to crime and safety, the scope for the site was reduced to a ten-foot band along the Avenue. Not afraid to

pHOtO: SIKOrA WellS Appel

Appropriating the street as kids at play have always done it.

A series of play structures for all ages on lancaster Avenue.

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pHOtO: pUBlIC WOrKSHOp

start small and armed with funding from LISC Philadelphia, Public Workshop installed a community bulletin board, a fence, and a street-facing platform. With further funding from the Philadelphia Health Department, they partnered with the Community Design Collaborative on the Art of Active Play to create a mini-fort, a switchback bench and balance equipment. The growing linear playscape is a quirky, fun, and informal public space. Bonded to the street it’s like an open-air storefront run by kids.

Understanding the ecosystem of the neighborhood, PEC and Public Workshop see the potential for this tactical intervention to both thrive and to have a critical impact at a larger scale. Despite its reputation as a tough corner, the project’s specific location is propitious: across the street are a daycare and an afterschool center, and around the corner a charter school, all filled with kids who gravitate to the site.

Gilliam says he wants to “rewire the community engagement process” by making it tangible, visible and energized by youth.

Empowered by making a physical imprint, the kids excite community interest. While at work on Lancaster Avenue, the Building Heroes drew wide participation and garnered support from community members of all ages.

Public Workshop has just moved into a nearby storefront shared with PEC to continue its work on Lancaster Avenue. This summer the whole lot will be appropriated for a youth-centered community design workshop. Tiny but intense with activity, Play Lancaster may reset an urban system, redefining what youth-engagement on a struggling commercial corridor can mean for the community’s future.

pHOtO: SIKOrA WellS Appel pHOtO: GrOUp MelVIN DeSIGN

Roosevelt Plaza Pop-up Park Nowhere are the challenges to public realm as evident as in Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest municipalities in the country. Facing City Hall, Roosevelt Plaza Park occupies the site of a demolished parking garage. The award-winning “pop-up” is ambitious and innovative in terms of design, program and research. Led by the Cooper’s Ferry Partnership and designed by landscape architects and planners Sikora Wells Appel and the Melvin Group with a catalytic grant from the William Penn Foundation, the site, once only a wind-swept walkthrough, is transformed to a multi-dimensional and sociable civic space.

Over two years of iterative place making – designing, building, studying, revising, and studying again – the designers have been able to experiment freely with low-cost high-impact interventions, and observe how they engage the public. Towers made from stacked locally sourced IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container) totes form the centerpiece of the plaza where jazz concerts and other public events are held; in Year One they supported canopies, and with the assistance of New American Pubic Art, the columns were lit from within to create a nighttime spectacle.

Motion sensors would change the light color from cool to warm as people passed. In Year Two the same cubes were reinstalled as planters topped with rainwater capturing saucers. These green towers and a rain curtain set the stage for a lively, interactive teaching demonstration about the flooding problems facing Camden and the need for green and blue infrastructure.

Off to the side is the Grove, a node with moveable tables and chairs and brightly colored umbrellas interspersed with plantings. Joe Sikora describes this as the “social room” of the site where the exceptionally diverse population in the area comes to lunch and hang out with friends – city workers, out-patients from the methadone clinic, Rutgers students, neighborhood children. Here the social-bonding agent is a simple upright piano where people from every walk of life love to

roosevelt park faces Camden City Hall. In Year 2 the IBC totes are stacked as green columns topped with water-harvesting saucers. Blue pVC pipes direct water to an interactive water feature.

perform. This small but compelling intervention creates what William Whyte has famously called “triangulation”, an urban event stimulating complete strangers to interact as if they knew one another.

During each six month installation the pop-up park was documented using time-lapse photography, video interviews, mapping and postcard surveys to identify how the park was used and by whom, what worked and did not – a serious study to help direct long term capital investment. Along with the thoughtful critique and useful proposals an overwhelming sense of pride infuses the feedback from the users. Says one: “Camden has been neglected for so long…and to have somebody just care enough to give this – it’s the smallest thing but the biggest thing”.

This is what tactical urbanism can do – make a small thing become a big thing, touch a chord of authentic desire, open the conversation.

If strategically situated and embraced by the community, tactical urbanism can add spontaneity and immediacy to the scope of urban design practice. But it is limited by its scale and temporality; it cannot compensate for lack of adequate economic and social opportunity in the margins of society. As scholar and activist Toni Griffin has asserted, these creative appropriations of the public realm are important in and of themselves, but they also represent a call for public policy reform, even as they are evidence of the power of a local imaginary. ■ Sally Harrison is a Registered Architect in Pennsylvania and has professional

A piano is placed in the seating grove of roosevelt park.

Constantly in use, it draws people together.

and teaching expertise in social impact design, sustainable urban design, and urban history/theory.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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PRACTICE: ThE ROwhOUSE REImAgINED AND RElEVANT

BY JOANN GRECO

Tiny houses? They may be the latest residential trend but Philadelphians have been making do with, and reveling in them for ages. Sustainability? What do you call shared walls, smaller footprints, and flat roofs crying out for solar arrays and succulents?

Affordability? How about blocks and blocks of new $250,000 homes nestled alongside older ones long ago bought and paid for?

When it comes to today’s real estate buzz-phrases, the unprepossessing rowhouse ticks off points again and again. And Philadelphia, where they make up some 60 percent of occupied housing units, is proving a lab for imaginative designers willing to tackle the form. “We have come to really love rowhouses,” says architect Brian Phillips, AIA, principal at ISA, one of several young firms creating a new urban residential vernacular. “They’re a super-flexible type that’s more about the context of the urban fabric than just housing. They defer to the city. And the minute you break out of tradition, there’s a lot of possibilities in that little box.”

these small, inherently affordable row houses would never be built today, but they offer home ownership and low cost rentals to people who would be shut out of the market in most big cities.

22 SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

Possibilities exist, too, in the good old-fashioned, standard issue rowhouse: a brick-clad rectangle of between 1,000 and 2,000 square feet that typically measures 16-feet wide by 40 feet deep and rises two or three stories. Plenty of aspirational and affluent homeowners have invested in updating their tired interiors while upgrading their inefficient systems. Meanwhile, thousands of lower income homeowners are eager to simply get their houses back into shape.

A plethora of organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together Philadelphia, stand ready to help them, operating on the principle that the most affordable (and most sustainable) home is the one that’s already built. One emerging effort, the Healthy Rowhouse Project – founded by the Design Advocacy Group (DAG) – recently secured funding to work with such service providers in developing a model to rapidly implement repairs and preserve housing citywide. The idea is that fixing leaky roofs and replacing rotting joists keep both the building and its inhabitants safe and healthy.

“The Philadelphia rowhouse has given so many people a chance to own a home,” says kiki Bolender, AIA, who serves on the project’s working team. “It’s just heartbreaking to see the amounts that can cause someone to give it all up. For a fraction of what it costs to demolish and rebuild, we can save existing stock – and help the people who live there stay.”

Rowhomes weren’t always such a regular part of the Philadelphia landscape, of course. William Penn’s “countrie town” only morphed into a dense one of narrow homes on compact lots as the city grew and landlords and developers divided their parcels. Rowhouses in Philly came to mean everything from the trinities of Elfreth’s Alley to the post-Civil War mansions of Rittenhouse Square.

Today, emphasizes Bolender, who also co-wrote The Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual, the rowhouse “absolutely remains relevant as a building type.”

pHOtO: SAM OBerter

the family space of Belfield townhouses. It is the first Certified passive House project in pennsylvania. Designed by Onion Flats.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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Once a house becomes vacant, it can deteriorate quickly, eroding the neighborhood fabric.

Most of the new stuff going up in greater Center City and other residential environs runs true to form, only bigger.

But during the last two decades, a handful of architects have dared to tinker with the template in neighborhoods such as Francisville, Fishtown, kensington, and Point Breeze. The preferences of contemporary homeowners, sustainability concerns, and the push toward affordability are driving this re-examination of an ever-hardy but adaptable building type. Yes, the form has

limitations: narrowness is one, verticality another. Phillips says, “Stairs are a huge issue for us. Whether spiral, straight, switchback; in the front, in the back, in the middle; we spend a lot of time on where they go. “But these parameters inspire creativity. We see these limitations as opportunities.”

New materials, new uses “Traditional rowhouses came from a different expectation of privacy because there were many more occupants living in

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pHOtO: rACHel SCHADe

A block of green affordable housing on Sheridan Street developed by Asociacion puertoriquenos en Marcha. Designed by ISA.

them than there are now. The generally accepted progression is public rooms on the ground floor to private on the top. But we’re seeing a lot of conversion of bedrooms into different living environments that don’t always require a door,” says Phillips. For example, his firm has put master bedrooms on the second floor, reserving the third for a guest room or an auxiliary living area. Basements have progressed from throwaway mechanical spaces to usable ones.

The advent of rear-entry garages – the result of Philadelphia’s updated zoning code banning front-loaded ones – has presented a new small space that faces the street and can be used as a home office or a different kind of entry.

Out front, things remain pretty much the same. “Normally, the fronts of our houses are all where you’d expect them to be. We’re very committed to obeying the rules of the urban fabric,” says Phillips.

ISA’s Sheridan Street development, for the nonprofit community group Associacion Puertorriquenos en Marcha (APM) was one of Philadelpha’s first green affordable housing projects. There the houses are positioned in an unusual staggered arrangement necessitated by the site’s oddly-shaped lots.

Facades don’t neccesarily hew to the old rules either. ISA’s work for sustainable developer Postgreen Homes. Phillips says “Windows often take a back seat because even the best insulated ones don’t completely seal a building’s envelope against energy leakage. They take these considerations to a whole new level.

We’ve learned to allow in natural light from the top or by punctuating the facade in different patterns and sizes so [the fenestration] doesn’t resemble the typical well-behaved lineup of older rowhomes.”

As Alex Dews, executive director of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, observes, “the further you push the envelope in terms of sustainability, the further you’re going to get from the traditional look of a rowhouse.”

Affordable, not “cheap” The same is true when architects address housing affordability. For instance, ISA’s first project with Postgreen was the 2007 series of “100k” houses in East kensington. Phillips says “Brick was the first thing to go in favor of fiber cement planking that is substantially more affordable. Rowhouses are inherently affordable since you’re only building two facades not four. For us, simple design moves, flat facades made of one material, and reducing the number of interior walls, save on construction costs while providing a minimalist aesthetic.”

Design-build practice Onion Flats has pursued adaptive reuse and other aspects of sustainability since its start. One early project features entrances made of converted freezer doors found on site.

The firm’s forays into affordable housing don’t stint on incorporating quality green elements, either. For Belfield Townhomes, developed for the nonprofit Raise of Hope in 2012, the team leveraged its modular construction techniques to build net-zero capable houses, the first Certified Passiv Haus in Pennsylvania.

While acknowledging that Philadelphia is in danger of coasting on a new set of design cliches, Bolender welcomes those daring to “mess with the form to make it 21st-century. In general, these homes are much more compatible with city life than the suburban-style affordable housing developments of the past.”

Rather than sacrificing style, the best affordable housing simply means two things: smaller living quarters and more basic materials. “The $100k house was asking questions about a new kind of starter home and how the rowhouse could be modest, yet still smart,” Phillips says. Even Postgreen’s more expensive developments (400k-ish) are built for millenials moving to Fishtown and kensington.

Bolender agrees that there’s room for relatively smaller, more affordable units that fall in what’s being called the “missing middle” of the housing spectrum. “But not many developers want to build them. That’s why it’s so important to save the ones we’ve

got. So many of them were built as workers’ housing, which meant – people could afford them!”

Older can be better Thousands of 50-plus year-old rowhomes dot the Philadelphia landscape in all directions. Dews says “They already have the potential to be much more efficient than a typical brand-new single family home because of their shared walls. They are so sturdy and durable that once you do some demo, you have a blank slate that is easily upgradable to the most modern, efficient, and code-compliant of building systems.”

Even basic system repairs – patching a roof, weatherstripping a window – can go a long way toward making homes more habitable and encourages its low-income owners to age in place.

Rebuilding Together Philadelphia renovates the homes of 75 families each year, mobilizing hundreds of volunteers, working off a checklist of 25 goals established with the National Center for Healthy Housing. According to Stefanie Seldin, executive director of Rebuilding:

“The repairs cost an average of $8,000 and are designed to improve safety, health and efficiency. They are not cosmetic.”

Take the recent case of Margaret, who turned 81 on the day a Rebuilding team arrived to install grab bars in the bathroom, replace moldy carpets with vinyl flooring, caulk and seal windows and doorways, and repair faulty plumbing. Seldin elaborates: “Since 2010, home values have doubled in Margaret’s neighborhood east of Temple University. That means taxes have increased and someone like Margaret doesn’t have money left over for repairs. But she wants to stay. When we were done, Margaret said it was the best birthday present she’d ever received.”

Usually, saving a building makes sense.

But some are too far gone – or have already disappeared – and so new construction, too, has a part to play. Practiced in tandem, the delicate balance of infill and conservation, of innovation and context, can contribute to the making of a healthy and diverse city.

Bolender says “Remember, it’s not just Philadelphia that people call home – it’s a neighborhood and it’s a street.”

And, very likely, it’s a rowhouse. ■

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OPINION

benjamin Franklin: Social Justice and the Cultural Commons

BY JON CODDINGTON When considering the principles of social justice and equity that ground our democracy, it serves our interests to look to Benjamin Franklin for guidance. Though it remains difficult to tease apart the scientist from the printer, the diplomat from the artisan, or the inventor from the citizen, it is in combination that Franklin created the kind of useful knowledge that he thought to be of greatest benefit to society.

Franklin’s attitude toward social justice was embedded in a broader idea of the “cultural commons”. For Franklin the cultural commons was an expansive public realm, creating opportunity for social justice to flourish while simultaneously establishing “durable knowledge” that was useful to all. He would have been sympathetic to Thomas Paine’s assertion in The Rights of Man – published one year after Franklin’s death – that it was the obligation of society and its institutions to give, “genius a fair and universal chance,” enabling members of society to meet their obligations as citizens and be given an equitable opportunity to achieve their personal aspirations within society.

The interrelated characteristics of social justice and the cultural commons share principles that are relevant to the contemporary practice of design in the public interest. First, the uniting of the limited “I” with the social, cultural and communal existence of “we” enables an individual to identify with another’s life; similar to the arts, they operate not just through reason and argument but also through feeling and engagement. Second, our infinite capacity for association through the sharing of experiences, ideas and things, affirms the deeper relationships between humans and the world they inhabit. And third, Franklin’s reliance on the rigorous and creative combination of experience melded to experiment and social justice have an intensity and intentionality about them that are accessible to all through practicality and craft.

As a creature of the Enlightenment, Franklin viewed the acquisition of knowledge as a common good and the primary means to create an equitable and just society. Print – and by extension the free and open exchange of ideas – was his means for achieving this end. Print extended the reach of innovation, where through open, consecutive, and cumulative discourse, ideas and things could be improved through use, criticism experimentation and application. (Interestingly, the Millennials and their promotion of the open-source revolution and its accompanying “next generation democracy” echo much of Franklin’s ethos.)

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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OPINION THE uNiTiNG oF THE LiMiTED “i” WiTH THE SoCiAL, CuLTuRAL AND CoMMuNAL ExiSTENCE oF “WE” ENABLES AN iNDiViDuAL To iDENTiFy WiTH ANoTHER’S LiFE. Never applying for a patent, Franklin viewed his contributions as acts of collaboration and thus collective contributions to the cultural commons rather than moments of individual genius. For Franklin, ideas and inventions were to stand on their own, analyzed and critiqued by others regarding their utility and efficacy. Regarding social justice and our cultural commons, the realities and ideas that interested Franklin were those society found to be durable – that is those that can exist over time and have utility and benefits for all. Franklin would have been sympathetic to the philosopher karl Popper’s dictum that it is only through criticism that knowledge can be produced and that dissent is an important form of criticism, one that is crucial for the survival of a participatory democracy and a just city characterized by its civitas.

Durable knowledge didn’t apply solely to ideas but to palpable things and institutions.

Franklin and his friends enriched community life in his adopted city by launching a lending library, insurance company, school, hospital, learned society and militia. He was also involved with the health and safety of the city through the establishment of a fire brigade, the lighting, cleaning and paving of public streets, a fireplace that minimized house fires while conserving fuel and, of course, the lightning rod which was first installed on a public building.

Franklin meshed private and public needs in ways we can continue to model our own efforts on. In all of these endeavors and many others, we can see powerful forms of design thinking at work where maximum effect was often achieved with minimum means. We need only think of the lending library to see how this semi-private idea – friends with limited means – lending their books to each other evolved into our city’s public

library system. It was a brilliant addition to our cultural commons that was at once scalable and evolutionary, giving government the confidence to create and embrace public libraries as a public good.

The preamble of the Constitution begins, “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…” With these beginning words Franklin, Madison and the other framers of the Constitution recognized that creating such a document and constructing a nation of laws begins with a collective vision. These words also acknowledge that human beings and their creations are fallible and that perfection can only be an ambition but never truly achieved; hence the necessity to constantly critique and possibly amend and renovate our public realm and our social justice system while constantly expanding our cultural commons. Similar to our city, the design of the Constitution – through its amendment process – empowers us to make our own contributions to it, adding our voices to the on-going discourse between the past, present and future, reflecting our hopes, aspirations we believe have value for ourselves and those who will come after us.

The Constitution is at once malleable and stable as Rittenhouse Square, Franklin Parkway and other aspects of our city’s public realm that we have amended through design over time. As we similarly design, amend and renovate our current understanding of the just city, we would do well to revisit Franklin and his expanded notion of our physical cultural commons, giving our citizen’s free and unfettered access to it, so all of us can meet our obligations to ourselves, to each other and to our city as Franklin would have us do. ■ Jon Coddington is an architect, urban designer, and an educator. Currently he is a professor of architecture at Drexel University.

Photo Credit © 2012 Greg Benson

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28 SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

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OXFORD MILLS

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Oxford Mills serves to energize, support, and provide an urban sanctuary for likeminded individuals who seek to educate.

Education-related nonprofit groups, like Teach for America will house 35,000+ square feet of commercial space along with nine different education-based nonprofit organizations.

Through the conversion of two 1879 mills in the up-and-coming South kensington section of Philadelphia, the new apartments and offices house teachers and nonprofit educational organizations in hopes to create a cohesive community of educators. The project offers 114 30

SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

DESIGN PROFILE

Project: Oxford Mills Location: Kensington Neighborhood of philadelphia, pA cLient: D3 Developers Project Size: 84,000 SF architect: Bartonpartners Architects planners, Inc.

market-rate apartments with 60% of them reserved for teachers who are offered a 25% discount.

The project stems from the belief of bringing educators together in an affordable and supportive community, while enticing them to stay and work in the troubled school district. Initially developed in Baltimore, Oxford Mills is the first of its type in Philadelphia. The project demonstrates core historical preservation and renovation practices through a multidisciplinary approach; BartonPartners designed the architecture, landscape architecture and interior design. The design sought to serve its users by reusing existing paving, structure and core elements. Enhancing these with more modern amenities and design features, such as retail space with a café and yoga studio, open courtyards, breakout rooms, computer

labs and community lounges, while still preserving the factory origin of the space. The revitalization of the formerly cut off Hope Street, unites the neighborhood, effectively removing barriers between the locals and residents. Now being accessible to all, Hope Street leads to public interior courtyards providing lush garden-style spaces used for social activities and events. Ultimately, with preservation and sustainability in mind, Oxford Mills aims to build a well-integrated community for educators and the surrounding neighborhood intended to enhance education. ■ Editor’s Note: Front and Oxford was one of three sites explored in 2010 through Infill: Industrial Sites, a community-engaged design initiative of the Community Design Collaborative.

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

31

STEPHEN KLEIN WELLNESS CENTER

brawer & hauptman

32

SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

DESIGN PROFILE The Stephen klein Wellness Center was Project HOME’s first venture into new construction of a healthcare facility. Beyond healthcare, the building program strove to provide a means of community wellness. The provision of Primary Care, Dental, Behavioral Health, an onsite YMCA, Teaching kitchen, showers, laundry, and multiple meeting rooms in an underserved area, allowed the building to become a hub for physical, mental, and community wellness.

Early in the process a design charrette was held to gather opinions from neighbors, future facility patients, healthcare workers, and even skeptical locals who had issues with the project. Several schematic massing options with general material concepts were shared, discussed, and voted on to gain consensus of how the building should look and, more importantly, feel. Throughout the discussions, requests for warmth, openness, and privacy were recurrent.

While warmth was easily achieved through the use of natural-feeling materials, inviting colors, and settings, the concepts of simultaneous

openness and privacy proved to be a challenge.

Ultimately, the design employed south-facing clerestory windows with light shelves to bounce natural light into the space. Meanwhile on the north elevation, facing a busy street, shoulderheight brick walls with high expanses of reflective glass above conceal the identity of those seated in the waiting areas.

Rhythmically breaking the space, between waiting areas, bays of fully transparent glass extend closer to the floor. Far more than a waiting room, the light-filled public space of the building became affectionately known as “The Commons” where gatherings, impromptu meetings, hanging out, and drop-in education sessions are encouraged.

While clinical portions of medical buildings are often characterized by disorienting long corridors lined with exam rooms, this is not the case here. Although the program includes 15 Exam, 4 Behavioral Health, and 9 Dental Rooms, each main corridor is interrupted by a vast central corridor that reintroduces the light and warmth of the Commons. Complete with

an accessible planted courtyard, it also includes a “living room” meant to provide comfort and a sense of belonging and place to patients seeing multiple clinicians in one visit.

Throughout the process, snapshot renderings of the design were created and vetted through Project HOME leaders, donors, and healthcare team, as well as members of the “Community Advisory Board.” All had significant impact on the final outcome. Walkthroughs that occurred during construction even inspired modifications and additions to improve overall patient experience far beyond clinical aspects.

At completion, Project HOME could boast its first Federally Qualified Healthcare Center.

The project was on its way to achieving LEED Silver certification, “The Commons” were filled with activity, and healthcare professionals were seeing patients. Complete with artwork inspired by community members’ stories told to artist, Meg Saligman, the building was truly a collaborative effort spanning years which allowed so many to have a sense of ownership and belonging. ■

Project: Stephen Klein Wellness Center Location: 21st and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, philadelphia, pA cLient: project HOMe Size: 30,000 SF Project teaM: Brawer & Hauptman, Architects (Architect) eustace engineering (Civil engineer) KS engineers, p.C. Mep (Structural engineer) e&M engineers (engineer) INteCH Construction (Construction Manager)

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

33

VENICE ISLAND TRANSFORMATION

buell Kratzer Powell ltd Since opening in October 2014, the Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center has become the centerpiece of a cultural renaissance in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood. Venice Island mitigated longstanding environmental issues and has been embraced by the community. The project was designed for and with local residents’ input.

The innovative, collaborative project restored Venice Island between the Manayunk Canal and Schuylkill River. It revitalized an abandoned, flood-prone site into a vibrant community space. The $46 million project included sophisticated stormwater management with a fourmillion-gallon underground water storage tank and pumping station to alleviate flooding. A deteriorated rec center was replaced with a 250-seat, city-owned arts center that hosts after-school programs, special events, and professional theatrical productions. The arts center sits above the flood plain among recreation amenities including an amphitheater, spray ground, sculpture garden, and basketball courts.

BkP was architect of record for the performing arts center. A contemporary interpretation of the masonry industrial mills that once lined the site, the center was envisioned as a geode: cast-in-place 34 SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

DESIGN PROFILE concrete, precast exposed-aggregate concrete panels, metal fascia and roof on the exterior juxtapose with a richly textured, maple-clad theater interior. High-tech glazing maximizes daylight and minimizes heat gain. Solar photocells control low-voltage LED site lighting.

Gray water reclaimed from the green roof is reused for non-potable applications.

Hazen and Sawyer designed infrastructure improvements, including an underground concrete sewer overflow detention basin – gravityfed when the adjacent interceptor becomes supercharged during storms – and the LEED Silver-eligible pump house that features a green roof of drought-resistant plants; a glass stair tower to reduce the need for interior lighting; light and occupancy sensors for energy efficiency; shade and reflection devices for sun control to reduce air-conditioning; and waterconserving plumbing fixtures. Public parking and site amenities were constructed atop the basin, including rain gardens to manage stormwater runoff.

Andropogon collaborated with Hazen and Sawyer, BkP, the Manayunk Development Corporation, and Philadelphia Water Department on master planning the fiveacre site. The high-performance landscape emphasizes sustainable water management.

A central spine located beyond the floodway manages lighting, storm-water flow, and pedestrian traffic. The structured, active landscape is complemented by a children’s water garden and riverbank restoration.

From the partnership between design and construction teammates, city agencies, and local residents to the environmental stewardship and arts and recreation amenities, Venice Island is greater than the sum of its parts.

Named Environmental Project of the Year by the Construction Management Association of America’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter, and recipient of a 2015 Delaware Valley Green Building Council Groundbreaker Award, Venice Island was commended by the Philadelphia Water Department for teamwork, professionalism, quality control, and communication.

The Deputy Commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation called Venice Island a model of how city departments can coordinate with the community.

Venice Island promotes environmental stewardship while supporting a healthy and active community. As a result of its integrated design, the site has become a community complex where children feel safe to play, families gather with their neighbors, and visitors come to experience music and arts programming. ■

Project: Venice Island cLient: City of philadelphia Deptartment of public property – parks and recreation Project teaM: Buell Kratzer powell ltd. (Architect) Hazen and Sawyer (Water Systems) Andropogon (Master planning/landscape Design) Joseph Barbato Associates (Structural) Mark Ulrick engineers, Inc. (Mep) Agnelo Gomes Associates (electrical) Daniel J Keating Co. (General Contractor) riggs Distler & Co. (electrical Contractor) Five-Star Mechanical (Mechanical/plumbing Contractor)

AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016

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| context | AIA Philadelphia

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INDEX TO ADVERTISERS ARCHITECTURAL DOORS & WINDOWS Sharpan Building Systems LLP ...................3, 26 www.sharpansystems.com Sharpan Building Systems LLP ...................3, 26 www.spraystoneusa.com ARCHITECTURAL RENDERINGS GeorgeRenders ...............................................38 www.georgerenders.com

MODULAR CONSTRUCTION Steel River Building Systems, Inc....................37 www.steelriverinc.com/ PERMEABLE PAVERS CST Pavers ...................................................36 www.cstpavers.com

RENOVATIONS J.E Berkowitz ....................................................6 www.jeberkowitz.com/contex www.rbbwindow.com/context RETAINING WALLS CST Pavers ...................................................36 www.cstpavers.com

BUILDING PRODUCTS Specialty Building Systems .............................29 www.specialtybldgsystems.com CONCRETE MASONRY UNITS CST Pavers ...................................................36 www.cstpavers.com Fizzano Bros. Inc.............................................36 www.resources.concreteproductsgroup.com CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT Faithful+Gould ................................................25 www.fgould.com CONTRACTOR (GENERAL)/ CONSTRUCTION MANAGER Turner Construction Co. ..................................38 www.turnerconstruction.com/ office-network/philadelphia ENGINEERING Mainstay Engineering Group, Inc. ...................36 www.megr.com Powell, Trachtman, Logan, Carrle, & Lombardo,P.C. ...................................4 www.powelltrachtman.com

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3/9/16 9:57 AM

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GLASS J.E Berkowitz ....................................................6 www.jeberkowitz.com/contex www.rbbwindow.com/context

HAND DRYERS Saniflow Hand Dryer Corp. .............................37 www.saniflowcorp.com/ INSULATION Hunter Panels......................... Inside Front Cover www.hunterxci.com LIGHTING The Lighting Practice, Inc. ..............................28 www.thelightingpractice.com

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AIA Philadelphia | context | SPRING 2016 3/3/16 37 3:49 PM

ROOFING & BUILDING ENVELOPE SOLUTIONS The Garland Company Inc...............................36 www.garlandco.com SAFETY PRODUCTS Safety Hats - Direct Digital Manufacturing Services .........................Outside Back Cover www.safetyhats.com STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING Keast & Hood ..................................................29 www.keasthood.com TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING RJC Designs, Inc. ....................Inside Back Cover www.rjcdesigns.com WINDOWS & DOORS J.E Berkowitz ....................................................6 www.jeberkowitz.com/contex www.rbbwindow.com/context

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to the advertisers who helped make this publication possible.

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SPRING 2016 | context | AIA Philadelphia

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Glass Thickness:

Air Infiltration:

Static & Dynamic Water:

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CRF*:

U Value1:

Sound Transmission:

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4-1/2”

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0.06 CFM/FT.2 @6.24 PSF

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TU24650 Series Storefront Product Specifications Application: Low-Rise storefront, center set glass, inside/outside glazed

Face Width:

Overall Depths:

Glass Thickness:

Air Infiltration:

Static & Dynamic Water:

2"

6-1/2"

1"

0.06 CFM/FT.2 @6.24 PSF

12 PSF

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Sound Transmission:

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Overall Depths:

Glass Thickness:

Air Infiltration:

Static & Dynamic Water:

Structural Overload:

CRF*:

U Value1:

Sound Transmission:

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31 STC 26 OITC

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Face Width:

Overall Depths:

Glass Thickness:

Air Infiltration:

Static & Dynamic Water:

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2-1/2"

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AAMA 501.4 3 Cycles @ .005 x Span 3 Cycles @ .025 x Span

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Pressure Plate:

U Value

Sound Transmission:

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Overall Depths:

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Air Infiltration:

Static & Dynamic Water:

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4 1/2” & 6”

1"

0.06 CFM/FT.2 @6.24 PSF

15 PSF

Structural :

CRF*

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Sound Transmission:

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