Cira Center conference room ceiling

PITCHES in ceiling make all the difference. The entire workspace and meeting floor at the Cira Center in Philadelphia are very well designed making my experience of the hours I have spent in there listening to speakers really nice. There is a glamour to being there.
Cesar Pelli (and a host of staff, I'm sure) was the architect/designer.

Philadelphia and the Schuykill River water front.

It's going to be hard for Philadelphia to turn the Schuylkill river into a place to enjoy. The trains and I-76 make hard fences to jump. At one time the river for us was just another freeway of sorts; more like the freeway and rail lines we curse than like the park we'd like it to be now.

San Francisco has an amazing connection to the Bay but that is only because of two disasters. One is the collapse of trade economy which destroyed the port and the other was the earthquake that destroyed the Embarcadero Freeway. Now SF has a clean shot at the Bay. There's not much here for Philly to learn from unless it's to wait and turn industrial collapse and natural disaster to good use.
What to do....?

What skyscrapers look like from skyscrapers

 

Modernism in the minds of developers and architects of office towers = uniformity and tediousness. This isn't whining. It's a fact. There's no joy in looking out their window for anyone with an office on THIS side of 1500 Market Street in Philadelphia.

It is the people with the offices on the other side of this floor, those who face the funky glorious mess of City Hall's facade, who feel like the have something to look at. Here is THAT view from just down the hall:

Three Little Buildings

131 S. 18th, Philadelphia is in the details.

Lovely.

Serpents at Wayne Junction SEPTA Station

Oh so nice.

SEPTA'S poor beat up Wayne Junction Station must have been something else at one time.... These serpents most likely are the dolphins that belong to Benjamin Franklin's coat of arms. They show up all over the city. Penn's shield, or coat of arms, is a composite of Franklin's dolphins and Penn's three plates.

[UPDATE] They are fixing up this station.

Philly Iron

Nice old Philadelphia house on Allen Ln in Mt. Airy

Philly: You funky old city

Facades and Color

Over and over, the accidental prototyping of color on buildings by vapor barriers that have yet to be sheathed prove to me that their blues and yellows are far more human to me than the taupes, greys and sands that cover them in the end.

Buildings should be engaging...

...it's hard to know how to engage a sheet of glass.

Are Buildings Great or the Spaces That They Make?

This space in Ourense, Galicia, Spain is perfectly intriguing.

This image is by Robin Mooty and is at her blog.

Allen Lane SEPTA Station Rebuild

The groovy Furness pedestrian bridge at the Allen Lane SEPTA station in Philadelphia is being really nicely rebuilt.

Fall light on Deco theater.

East Mt Airy, Philadelphia PA.

Modernism at Plymouth Meeting Mall

Glass and white steel frame entry.

I am always surprised by the modern details at the Plymouth Meeting Mall. Placed there by national mall architect Victor Gruen in 1966, they seem sort of alone in their elegance. It would be great if they presaged some bitchin' modern experience like a super lux modern restaurant at the top of Macy's. That glamorous experience is not to be found inside the mall though.

Not to say that there isn't good design elsewhere at the Plymouth Meeting Mall. The design experience created by CREATE Architecture, Planning and Design. for Whole Foods and new stores in the lot below is really good.

It's still sad though that the interior experience of the mall is unhinged from this nice steel and glass entry that welcomes us.

Cheers to William Kleinsasser

He taught me about using personas when I design and gave me an understanding of how architecture flows around people's experiences.

And that it can do so in a way that provides the opportunity for greater meaning.

He also taught me about listening to users.

He was UX before the web was UX.

Cheers.

100 Years of Illustration : Aylward, William J. 1875-1956

"A Singapore Junk at Sea".

100 Years of Illustration : Aylward, William J. 1875-1956

Man, love this image

Congrats on the New WRT Website

It's good to see that Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) one of Philadelphia's largest architecture and planning firms, has relaunched their website

This new site moves much more smoothly than the previous site! Also the design is more appealing - lighter and crisper - and it's also easier to navigate. The previous site was dreary and hard to move around in. I can also imagine that this new site is easier to update and for search engines to crawl.

I might consider moving the footer nav up - it's lost far at the bottom.

Twitter feeds could also be pushed to the home page - not just create a link to them. For this clean and simple design, the dynamics a twitter feed would bring to the homepage would be positive. The style of writing on the tweets should be investigated though. A more personal style that shows the tweets are coming from a human at WRT would support the overall brand of real people doing work (this brand position is already reinforced in a variety of ways inside the site.)

Significantly better than most architect's web sites, this is an example to other Philadelphia and national architects.

Congratulations to WRT.

Character AND Theory

Character may be the antidote to the frustrating inability of current architecture theory to deliver buildings that are fulfilling.

Along with teaching theory, maybe we need to help architect students be better people - to have good character. In the film "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", Mr. Chips says that it is enough to teach students to have humor and a sense of proportion.

I think that is probably right.

I trust design justifications by people of good character who can take a balanced measurement of what can be seen through empathy, the intellect and a study of precedent.

I guess I am pitching a case by case theory supported by ongoing honing of one's personal compass.

Your theory will always be in beta but I think the buildings will be better.

Architecture has changed hands.

The pursuit of an architecture that pleases people, gives them mystery, fulfills their sense for beauty has gone underground. While the schools worry over theories, the job of developing architecture has changed hands.

Deep, deep and far from the surveillance of academia it has passed into...
... the hands of those who create worlds for cinema and gaming.

LOL. Holy moley. I think it's true. Do not underestimate the numbers of people who have experienced architecture within the gaming environment.

And while much of it would be called historically derivative by many architects and theorists, who can condemn a user-centric approach that drives towards creating architecture that interests people and gives them places they would love to inhabit?