Photo by Alex Feldman
For the first time in nearly 60 years, Philadelphia’s population has increased. The reversal comes as the Census Bureau has revised it’s 2008 estimate for the city because of challenges made by the City. Philadelphia’s population peaked around 2,000,000 in 1950 and was estimated to be 1,447,395 in 2008. In all, 93,000 people were added to the estimate bringing the city’s population to 1,540,351.
Source: Philadelphia Daily News
The reversal is clear evidence of the gradual shift from suburban to urban living preferences in the United States. Boston also saw its population increase in the latest census estimates from 559,034 to 620,535.
Source: www.nytimes.com
More was revealed yesterday and today about Todd Williams and Billie Tsiens’ design for Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation – which is planning a controversial move from Suburban Merion to the City’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In two videos published on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, the architects explain the concept and describe the elements of their design. In a clever move, William’s and Tsien have kept the original galleries in-tact, while ‘inserting’ two contemplative spaces ‘inside the walls’ of the original galleries. While some may argue this changes the effect of viewing the collection as it stands today, the insertion of a reading room and sunken garden will allow visitors to reflect on the art – something that is difficult to do in the cramped Merion galleries.
Source: www.nytimes.com
Meanwhile, both Inga Saffron of the Inquirer and Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times reviewed the design, bringing two different perspectives to the debate. Saffron praises the “rigorous clarity” of the organization of the building while Ouroussoff questions the move of the museum itself, citing the eccentricity of the original galleries as a refreshing attraction in the über-touristy world of blockbuster art.
Source: www.nytimes.com
The controversial move has been highlighted in the film “The Art of the Steal” which was a surprise hit at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Finally, the LA Times ran a piece yesterday that highlights architect Robert Venturi’s disdain for the move, citing the integral relationship between the 12 acre site in Merion and the existing galleries.
Source: www.philly.com
Source: www.philly.com
Philadelphia’s fabled Barnes Foundation is set to move to a controversial new home in the City’s cultural district on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. While this will place the collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings only blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Rodin Museum – thus creating one of the premier arts districts in the world – critics claim that the move will undermine the will of Albert Barnes. His collection is currently displayed in a specially built gallery just outside city limits in Merion, Pennsylvania, where Barnes hung the works not in chronological order, but in a way that related the works to one another.
The New York architecture firm of Todd Williams and Billie Tsien was commissioned to design the foundation’s new home in 2007. The design was a closely guarded secret until today. Plans were revealed, almost unceremoniously on Monday, two days before a scheduled hearing before the City’s Planning Commission. While the drawings released do not include the architect’s narrative, it appears they have kept the galleries in a similarly proportioned building fronting the Parkway. A new courtyard separates the galleries from the specialty exhibition space. The building’s proportions seem elegant, almost classical. With almost all of TWBT’s work, the devil will be in the details – the architects are known for their attention to craft and materials. One other note: it seems the designers chose to put the main entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue instead of the Parkway – which questions the urbanity of the plan. This is a challenging project steeped in controversy and until the architects present their full vision to the public, we will uphold final judgment.
A few months ago, we told you about Philadelphia’s plan to replace a car lane with a bike lane on two major east-west streets. The bike lanes officially opened on September 23 to great fanfare and concern from some citizens about the safety of cyclists on major city streets. The lanes appear to be successful so far, calming traffic and creating a safe haven for cyclists. While the lanes are a shining example of the city’s goal to become more sustainable and friendly to bicycles, they City could have used the opportunity to re-pave the streets and create a pot-hole free ride for both cyclists and motorists.
Photo credit: http://www.phillydesignblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bigbelly.jpg
The old moniker ‘filthydelphia’ may soon be a thing of the past for the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia has recently implemented a ingenious way to reduce costly trash pick-up and become greener at the same-time. 500 Big Belly trash compactors have been installed all over the city in an effort to save on waste desposal and become the Greenest City in America. These trash compactors can store 5 times the amount of garbage because a solar panel on top of each unit powers a compactor that crushes the garbage when the unit fills up. Over 10 years, the 500 cans are expected to save the city $13 million because trash pick-up has been reduced to 5 times a week from 17! This is not only a financial savings to the city but a way to reduce carbon emissions. Accompanying many of the units are 230 recycling bins which will allow Philadelphians to recycle curbside as pedestrians for the first time. For more, check out this great video from Good Magazine about the compactors.
Source: Photograph by Eric Laignel, New York Times
Seeking to promote the benefits of corian, DuPont has recently opened three corian design studios, one in New York, one in Milan, and one most recently in Philadelphia. The studio in Philadelphia, designed by Harry Allen. The 2,500 sf studio features a conference room table that appears to seemlessly stretch through a glass wall and window shades made of corian with etched images of city scene outside on them. The studio is located in the somewhat mysterious Marketplace Design Center – a haven for local interior designers to buy upmarket goods straight from the manufacturer. DuPont, headquarted in Wilmington, Delaware, chose Philadelphia because of its proximity to its hometown and because of its numerous design practices. It will be interesting to see Corian in a number of different applications, including exterior work such as its use in the Seeko’o Hotel in Bourdeaux, France.
Bicycling is about to get a whole lot safer in Center City, Philadelphia. A new initiative, expected to be completed by the end of the summer, will replace one lane of traffic with one lane for bikes on Spruce Street and Pine Street across most of Center City. While this may not seem like a big deal to most, consider this: Philadelphia’s street grid was planned in 1682 and while charming, is often considered too narrow to accomodate mulitple modes of transportation. As a result, some bikers feel safer on the sidewalk, causing problems for pedestrians. This new plan is a remarkable shift for Philadelphia which has more than often, in recent years, planned around the automobile. Instead, a car lane will be eliminated, creating the beginnings of a Center City Bikeway that will allow for a safer cross-town route for bikers.
Image from Flickr
Like a number of North American cities, Philadelphia’s waterfront has been cut off from it’s downtown by a wide trench of multi-lane roads, making any waterfront regeneration difficult. A new focus on waterfront planning has begun to change the minds of many planners and politcians in the city. Momentum is gaining for a movement to actually ‘un-dig’ Interstate 95 – the eight lane highway that separates Penn’s Landing from Center City Philadelphia – and divert the traffic to a traditional boulevard that would allow the street grid to once again meet the River. The area above the former highway would be set aside for new development. Could this be Philadelphia’s Big Dig – or ‘un-dig’? With Economic Stimulus pouring into cities for transportation infrastructure projects, this vision could have legs.
Source: 1bloor.com
Over the past few months a number of folks have tossed around the idea of turning the south east corner of Yonge & Bloor in Toronto into a public space: Spacing Toronto; Christopher Hume for the Toronto Star. A few local design shops, including Janet Rosenburg and Brown + Storey, have even prepared proposals. The site’s buildings were demolished last year in preparation for construction of an 80-storey luxury condominium, hotel and retail complex (1 Bloor East); only to have one of the project’s partners — Lehman Brothers — collapse and the world seemingly come to an end. So the site sits empty, and people have begun postulating.
I’m all for density, tall buildings and luxury developments. But I also strongly believe that the public realm is a critical component of any successful city. After reading Hume’s article I gave the idea some more thought. Toronto’s most successful square is easily Dundas Square. Love it or hate it, it’s capitalism and extreme commercialism at its best. Midtown has the Yonge & Eglinton Centre, with a square that has seen better days, and pretty soon Uptown will have the Hullmark Centre at Yonge & Sheppard (pictured below).
Source: http://tridel.com/hullmarkcentre/neighbourhood.php
When William Penn laid out the street grid for the City of Philadelphia he split the city into 4 quadrants and placed a public space at the centre of each one — today, Rittenhouse Square is the most celebrated of those squares. If we’re to think of Philadelphia, perhaps a Yonge & Bloor Square could be our 4th urban space on Yonge? Instead of rational quadrants, we’d have one long street that we can continue to tout as the longest street in the world, but now with 4 beautiful public spaces.
While reasonable, around the corner from Yonge & Bloor sits one of the finest examples of public spaces in the City of Toronto — Yorkville Park. What Yonge & Bloor needs is an icon, a global proclamation if you will. And what better way to do that than through 80 glorious storeys of glass, steel and concrete? I for one am dissappointed to see this project fall victim to the Great Recession. I hope that the folks at Bazis can get alternative sources of capital lined up and rectify the partnership issues that have likely surfaced due to Lehman’s demise. I’m hoping for good news going forward.
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