Located on the Delaware riverfront in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Quatre seeks to establish a new urban gateway at the city’s eastern edge. The once vibrant industrial waterfront has long been severed from the city by the addition of the highway nearly fifty years ago. Recently, new developments interested in taking advantage of the physical context and trying to reconnect the cities waterfront to its urban core have begun to emerge and be realized. Using this physical threshold as a contextual catalyst for establishing a unique architectural landmark, Quatre becomes an anchor in the reclamation and redevelopment of the cities waterfront.
Quatre seeks to evolve the use of technology in design to operate on multiple levels and aspects of the tower and landscape. The form and cladding of the tower are designed parametrically following two different guidelines for form and fabrication. The unique form of Quatre is achieved by manipulating the geometry of the classic quatrefoil to define the floor plates connecting these to create the envelope. A minimal façade system that responds to seasonal sun paths and programmatic content with two types of dot-matrix fritting and three louver types.
A parametric system was developed for the landscaped plaza that created variations in a set of similar elements and distributed them in a distinct pattern that serves to amplify and transition the tower’s form and curvature into a system for organizing the plaza and retail below.
Quatre contains a variety of programs to create a diverse destination with opportunities for different user groups to engage with each other. The base of the tower contains a massive public atrium with two theatre and two lecture halls at the south end. The café, bar, club and hotel lobby offer loft views into the atrium, and the offices and conference center begin the tower’s vertical programs. The hotel and residences complete the tower’s vertical program, and various diagonal cellular bands of spa, gym, and amenities pass through the tower using the facades diagrid system to create various public and social elements mixed within the tower and expressed in the façade.
The reclamation of the waterfront in a new festival pier creates an expansive outdoor space on the waterfront for various events ranging from summer concerts to winter ice skating. The pier connects around the base of the tower to the new landscaped plaza on the north side of Quatre. This landscape contains various furniture, lighting and interactive elements distributed around large wells which serve to give access and illumination to and from the shopping center located below.
