Program: Mixed Use, Urban Housing, Public Space, Gallery Pier Promenade Trail Destination
Categories: Conceptual Design, Delaware River, Urban, Housing, Public Space, Competitions, Parametric Design, Design Research
Client:
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Year 2011-12
Pier 12
Our approach integrates site geometry, solar angles and bridge shading as site specific data informing design process: folding, slicing, pixelating. A lo res boxy massing silhouetted with fine detail quality from balustrade and louvers to coarse pixelating on the north facade from bays to balconies to amenity spaces.
Adjacent to the site, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge is an iconic structure connecting Philadelphia to New Jersey since 1925. The bridges cables cast linear shadow patterns across the roof, a verdant canvas of sedums and succulents for bridge shadows to pattern dynamically year round. Horizontal louvers, vertical columns and cross-bracing create a grid pattern like the 1682 Portraiture of Philadelphia street grid that Philadelphia is known for. The louvers metallic surfaces also reflect the water and the colorful patterns of bridges lighting.*
The western end is home to the gym, community lounge and lobby creating a vertical mast on Columbus Boulevard attached to the horizontal building, akin to masted pier buildings on Columbus Boulevard like Cherry Street Pier.
Each unit has expansive vistas across the marina northward along the Delaware River to Northbank, a 45-acre enclave with 2000 linear feet of Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC) trails connecting the Promenade at Pier 12 to the longest waterfront trail and bike path system in North America.
* A 1987 Association for Public Art project of Venturi Scott Brown (Rauch) and Associates owned by the Delaware River Port Authority including the lights that glow as the PATCO train journeys across the bridge, on trackways rehabilitated by HNTB.
