Inga Saffron

Inga Saffron is the Architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Read Inga's blog Changing Skyline
Latest post: Gardening the City - 05/20/2013
Email Inga at isaffron@phillynews.com

Building owners share similar cases of deadly neglect
Common ground for skaters & picnickers

Eighth and Filbert underpass, proposed: An appealing public space glowing with tiny lights overhead and paved in a wall-to-wall masonry carpet.

Changing Skyline: Positive garage proposal

By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

06/06/2013

As regular readers of this column know, I consider parking garages the lowest form of downtown development. The uninhabited structures suck the life out of their surroundings and encourage people to choose cars over transit for trips into Center City. But if there is one thing worse than a free-standing downtown garage, it is a blighted free-standing downtown garage.

Building owners share similar cases of deadly neglect 06/06/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Richard Basciano and the late Samuel A. Rappaport were friends, business partners, and slumlords. Both rose from humble beginnings to become real estate speculators extraordinaire. They scooped up blighted properties in Philadelphia and sat on them for years while the structures crumbled, eventually selling them at huge markups to be developed by others.
Changing Skyline: An urban design legend 05/23/2013: A new biography of the great city planner is welcome and timely amid today's visions of urban design.

By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Philadelphia is a city that struggles with certain disadvantages. It is not easy being stuck midway between the nation's financial and political capitals. It doesn't regularly produce winning sports teams. We don't have enough corporate giants headquartered here, or enough of the philanthropists who trail in their wake.
Common ground for skaters & picnickers 05/16/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

For far too long, it was assumed that skateboarding and public parks went together about as well as oil and water. A decade ago, that notion led to skaters' being driven from Philadelphia's LOVE Park, an internationally heralded mecca for the sport. Skaters were seen as an undesirable subculture and a danger to those pursuing more traditional park pleasures, like sitting on benches and eating lunch.
Changing Skyline: City steering to bike sharing 05/10/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Philadelphia didn't need Bicycling magazine to confirm that it is one of America's best biking cities (No. 17 on its 2012 list). You can see it every day on the streets: The steady stream of commuters sluicing down Center City's bike lanes. The tangle of bikes hitched to U-shaped racks and bike corrals. (More, please.) The proliferation of neighborhood bike shops.
Zoning board undermines city planning 05/03/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

What makes Philadelphia's new zoning code such a landmark policy is that it embraces the modern view of cities first articulated by such urbanists as Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte. They understood that cities couldn't survive with fortified streets and blank ground floors. In the spirit of that movement, the code took the bold step of banning a particular local scourge: garage-fronted rowhouses.
Changing Skyline: Retail magic missing from Kensington lofts proposal 04/26/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

On paper, the proposed Soko Lofts project promises to do for its South Kensington neighborhood what the Piazza at Schmidts did for Northern Liberties. Like its paradigm-shifting predecessor two blocks south, Soko Lofts would rim its large block with a dense array of mid-rise apartment buildings, smartly broken up into manageable segments. The spaces between the buildings would become passageways, beckoning the public into a landscaped interior courtyard.
Reviewing the 'plans' for Philly's second casino 04/19/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Philadelphia's recent casino hearings brought back memories of those giddy days in 2006 when gambling was new to Pennsylvania and no amenity was too extravagant for our city's gaming halls. Once again, the applicants vied to seduce us with all kinds of extras. A 320-room resort hotel! Spas! Bike paths! Fishing piers! Skating rink! Luxury shops! A starchitect design!
Cool, new housing for 'working poor' teachers 04/15/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

It's easy to imagine the sprawling 19th-century brick mill on South Kensington's Howard Street as just another high-end apartment complex for twentysomething professionals, the newest outpost on Philadelphia's ever-advancing frontier of gentrification.
A billboard puts Philly apartment tower on hold 04/12/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Any number of obstacles can kill a high-rise project in Philadelphia. Usually it's money. Construction costs can run as high as New York's, yet rents remain much lower here, the margins smaller. Tall towers frequently get ensnared in politics, especially when a neighborhood group is nervous about having more people around.
Glaxo at Navy Yard will change the way we work 04/05/2013: By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

Changing Skyline: You know you're not in the usual Big Pharma bunker as soon as you step inside the atrium and are blasted with natural light and jelly-bean colors.