At MoMA's exhibit on the history and future of prefab dwellings, five actual little homes do their parts for efficiency.
NEW YORK - Finding a design for the perfect prefabricated house is the Holy Grail of architecture. Some of the biggest names in modernism, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Walter Gropius to Marcel Breuer, have tried their hands at ready-to-assemble shelter, but the promise of cheap mass production somehow always eluded them.
- Amenities Make the City
In the brief, muddled history of gambling in Pennsylvania, legalities have never been an obstacle. So when you hear Gov. Rendell say, with a rueful shake of the head, that the two planned Delaware River casinos can be "legally re-sited" only if their operators make the move voluntarily, don't be dismayed.
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Changing Skyline: Adding coffee to the culture
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When you think about it, the development sagas of Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Independence Mall are awfully similar. Each started out with the aim of concentrating Philadelphia's cultural power in one part of the city. And after that imperial ambition was thwarted, each remained militantly opposed to allowing displays of commerce to interrupt its vision of grandeur. For years, it was nearly impossible to buy so much as a bottle of water as you slogged between widely spaced monuments.
- Design for 5-story rental housing features rowhouse-reminiscent rhythm.The architect for 777 South Broad, the latest foray into residential construction by developer Carl Dranoff, takes pains to describe the design as an "urban" building and a "background" building. That's architect-speak for: "Don't expect exciting design."
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In one corner of Center City, a private developer has just completed the tallest green building in America, the Comcast Center. Three blocks east, the state is beginning work on an equally large building, the Convention Center expansion. Consider it the SUV of meeting halls.
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As college graduates are often told at this time of year, half of life is just showing up. For political leaders, half the job is just stating their goals, then telling the public how they expect to realize them. In the first major policy speech of his five-month-old administration, Mayor Nutter presented a pitch-perfect vision on a subject that rarely gets people's hearts racing: planning and zoning.
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For nearly two decades, the Boyd Theater was a building that just couldn't get any love. One former owner went all the way to Pennsylvania's Supreme Court to reverse the theater's historic designation. Another wanted to raze the art deco movie palace. A couple of preservationists were even heard disparaging its charms.
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You could argue that Philadelphia already has an architecture museum: itself. The city boasts an architectural lineage longer and more varied than that of almost any other place in America, ranging from the Lilliputian colonial-era houses along Elfreth's Alley to the gargantuan, newly minted Comcast Center, the country's tallest green skyscraper.
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If a new skyscraper can't be great architecture, it can still make its mark as a dazzling presence. And if it can't be dazzling, it can at least be big.
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It's always a little embarrassing when someone notices that the thing you're treating like trash is actually a treasure. So Philadelphia should be feeling properly chagrined that it took the National Trust for Historic Preservation to point out that the endangered Boyd Theater is an architectural gem worth hanging onto with all our municipal might.
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Changing SkylineTime to transform City Hall into Phila.'s civic meeting place
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Who would have thought that yanking Philadelphia's city planners out of their 16-year-long politically induced coma would have been so easy? But it took just three choice words to set them on the road to recovery: "plan of development."
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