Potential development at Festival Pier, an area rich in history and anchored by substantial buildings and vibrant neighborhoods.
The Master Plan for the Central Delaware has received a 2013 Award of Excellence from AIA New York State. The goal of this 30-year plan is to transform this six-mile length of Philadelphia's Central Delaware River Waterfront into an authentic extension of the thriving city and vibrant neighborhoods immediately to its west, breathing life back into a post-industrial waterfront once at the heart of Philadelphia's economy.
Hidden City's Vivienne Tang reviews two in-progress projects at the Energy Efficient Buildings Hub in Philadelphia--both of which will serve as demonstration projects for energy-efficiency strategies in commercial buildings.
Philadelphians spend 29 percent more on energy costs in commercial buildings than Americans do on average and energy spending is only higher in New York City, Washington, DC, and Boston. The Energy Efficient Buildings Hub–know as the EEB Hub–headquartered at the Navy Yard, wants to change that.
The federally-funded 27-member consortium led by Penn State University was the first Energy Innovation Hub created by the Obama administration. The goal of the project is to develop affordable tools for design, construction, and operation that will significantly reduce energy waste–and therefore costs–in commercial buildings under 250,000 square feet. Now, several years after its launch, the EEB Hub will try to prove its point by creating two demonstration projects–one retrofit and one new construction–on the Navy Yard campus. Both buildings, substantially funded through state grants given to Penn State during the Rendell administration, are expected to be open by spring 2014.
Opened in 2011 and designed by James Corner Field Operations, Race Street Pier is the newest space along the Philadelphia waterfront to open to the public as a component of the Master Plan for the Central Delaware. Now the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that work is underway to bring new life to Pier 53—once Philadelphia's arrival point for new immigrants—with a public park that will be part of the plan to create park land every half-mile along the six-mile stretch of waterfront.
To look at Pier 53 today, a thin finger of tree-covered land stretching into the tidal waters of the Delaware River, you would never guess that this was the front door to America for a million immigrants from Europe.
One of the first precast concrete panels delivered to site for constructing a prototype of Ideal Choice Homes in Ahmedabad, India.
KieranTimberlake Research Group Director Billie Faircloth and Fabrication Studio Manager Peter Curry went to Ahmedabad recently to conduct a site visit and workshop with the goal of building a full bay prototype of the Ideal Choice Homes structural system.
Renovations at Ortlieb's Bottling House included the replacement of the entire roof of the historic building.
PlanPhilly's Eyes on the Street reported recently on our adaptive reuse project at Ortlieb's Bottling House, the former bottling plant of a brewery that will be home to our new studio in 2014. Writer Ashley Hahn spoke with James Timberlake about plans to make use of natural ventilation and daylighting in the historic 1948 building, and to monitor the work spaces for comfort once we move in.
At Keeling Apartments, a residence hall on the University of California, San Diego campus, the exterior and interior walls, floors and ceilings are exposed concrete, constructed with intense focus on composition, formwork, and craft. The exterior is clad with precast concrete panels hung in front of the structure as rainscreens, supplemented by cement board cladding and window infill at the open bays of the concrete frame. Given their large size, the precast panels must be anchored to the building frame from the interior, before the weatherproofed back-up wall behind is installed.
An interactive art installation at Dilworth Plaza extends the city’s strong tradition of public art.
According to a survey conducted by the Smithsonian Institution, Philadelphia has more public art than any other American city. Dilworth Plaza will be no exception. The transformation of the space adjacent to City Hall includes an installation called Pulse that will trace the paths of the three major transit lines in columns of orange, blue, and green illuminated mist.
Pages from Vision+Voice featuring an interview with Kieran and Timberlake.
A fourth volume of Vision+Voice, compiled by the federal government's Design Excellence Program, features interviews with architects working to fulfill the environmental sustainability mandate for federal building projects.
AIA's Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects program “celebrates structures that use a thoroughly integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology to provide architectural solutions which protect and enhance the environment.” Entries are considered for the following factors: design and innovation, integration with the community, land use and effect on site ecology, bioclimatic design, energy and water use, approach to light and air, materials and construction, long-life considerations, and feedback loops.
We were pleased that our Keeling Apartments at the University of California at San Diego was named among the top ten this year.
Philadelphia's Center City District has installed a construction camera atop the Centre Square East office tower at 1500 Market Street to record the construction process at Dilworth Plaza and make it easy for Philadelphians to check its progress in real time.
