How can we reconnect the city and the waterfront while preserving a major regional thoroughfare and creating a new, green public amenity?

Once a series of mercantile piers and industrial uses cut off from the city by Interstate 95, Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront has been the subject of numerous planning studies over five decades. The new Penn’s Landing Park will reconnect Philadelphia to its river’s edge by constructing a transformational civic space at the heart of the city’s waterfront. The I-95 Central Access Philadelphia (CAP) project will guide pedestrians from city sidewalks to an 11.5-acre park with a series of public amenities and attractions.

In 2011, KieranTimberlake contributed to the award-winning Master Plan for the Central Delaware. The new Penn’s Landing Park is one of several initiatives developed from this plan, which proposed a public realm composed of parks, trails, and roads, transforming the formerly industrial waterfront into a landscape of 21st century urban development.

Designed in collaboration with Hargreaves Jones, the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC), and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), the new Penn’s Landing Park broke ground in September 2023.

KieranTimberlake’s scope of work includes the architectural design of the central pavilion, a mass timber structure that will house and support park amenities, including a café, skate rentals and support for the adjacent ice rink/summer plaza, and office space for the DRWC park operations team. An open breezeway connects the two interior spaces, offering an iconic meeting place and threshold between park activities.

The pavilion will provide a welcoming gateway to the waterfront and serve as a landmark destination. In addition to the programs within the pavilion, the design will accommodate flexible special events and functions of varied scales and activity.

The DRWC’s ambitious sustainability goals have enabled us to pursue a high-performance building design with a target goal of net zero energy consumption and zero carbon. To support these sustainability goals, the project is targeting to meet both the LEED Platinum certification and Zero Carbon Certification through the International Living Future Institute. It is projected to be Philadelphia’s first mass timber and zero carbon structure for public use.