Philly Deserves Better New Architecture
Cheap and ugly shouldn't be the norm, but it is when design is not a factor
Happy Hump Day to you and yours, everyone! I can think of nothing better on a humid, overcast day like today than to walk around and see as much vinyl siding as possible. I LOVE seeing gray and black paneling covering large walls side-by-side with the older architecture that makes our area unique. Even better? These panels are also great for allowing water into homes, meaning even new construction could have problems just behind the walls.
This all, of course, is absolute nonsense, as no one comes to Philly to see paneling. Additionally, every single piece of feedback I have ever heard across countless hours of meetings or read across pages upon pages of public feedback reviews is clearly against paneling. It does nothing visually to add to a neighborhood, slapping up puckered, gray hunks of placelessness that look like they are meant to be nothing but placeholders to a real building. Because it basically is! Vinyl siding needs to be replaced every 20+ years or so (per a vinyl siding company), with even metal paneling needing to be thrown away and rebuilt every 60 or so odd years (per the brick association lol). Imagine if every single building that we know and love across the city had to be rebuilt after 20 years! Gross - and terrible for the environment, too.
So, what put us in such a jolly mood today? After seeing little spicy action earlier this week (uh, save for the slightly big news yesterday), we came across an eight-building, 50-unit multi-family portfolio in West Kensington that hit the market within the last day or so. While exceedingly normal and mostly innocuous in an area that is seeing plenty of development of all types, we couldn’t help but feel a bit gutted by the preponderance of panels. Over and over again - on each and every one of the properties - panels reign supreme above ground floor brick and masonry. This is a standard approach across the city…and it sucks. It sucks! And why do we end up with these utilitarian, ugly building? For lots and lots of reasons, but here’s one that doesn’t get discussed as often as it should:
Giving a shit about design.
We understand that material and construction costs are high in Philly, and we get that land is becoming increasingly expensive for the most part. As such, value engineering - the practice of using a less expensive building material - tends to take place, leading to these structures that provide basically no architectural value.
Oh, and would you like some evidence of this claim? In the offering memorandum, a quick search shows zero results for architect, design, or community. If those who are selling these buildings don’t bother to mention the architect or architects or even reference the design of ANY OF THE EIGHT BUILDINGS, it’s seriously difficult to look at this as anything other than an ugly physical investment. If we assume that a potential buyer is, in fact, not interested in the architect of their potential $13-million investment, this financial-heavy view makes sense. This, sadly, is a very typical approach.
Are people entitled to build what they want? Is taste a personal thing? Do economics play into building in areas that have seen major disinvestment? Yeah, and I’m not saying we need to tighten the bureaucratic grip on design in the city, but I’m saying that legitimate feedback should be reviewed as legitimate. Buildings that look like this are ugly and no one likes them, even if they do provide needed supply of housing. Also, they suck to maintain and may literally be trash by the time Travis Konecny’s contract is up.
The piece of good news for those who might be looking to move to the area? Buried in the market analysis section of the above memorandum was this:
Recent deliveries have already dampened rent growth, with the annual rate falling to -0.8% in 2024Q3. This is lower than the five-year average and among the lowest in the region. Despite healthy net absorption of 1,700 units per year, CoStar forecasts the supply glut to continue through 2024, leading to further vacancy increases
In sum: rents are going down near here, even with thousands of units coming online. Will some residents be able to anecdotally poke holes in this statement with “Well, myyyy rent actually went up because of a building”? For sure, but one’s personal experience can be true and valid while not being the full story.
So, now that we’re done dumping on the private sector: hello, Philly/Pennsylvania/America! Let’s continue to expect this type of building to be the norm if there aren’t steps taken to create quality, sustainable, affordable housing for more people. If we are leaning on private investors to build pretty much all of the new housing across the city - including affordable (Disclosure: I previously worked at OCF Realty with the developer here and I think this is an awesome, important project) - of course we are going to see this! Perhaps those in charge of zoning and the government should take at least some baby steps to help make quality buildings the rule, not the exception.
If you expect to now see my pithy summary of what should be done at different levels of government, please look elsewhere, as literally no one has a clear-cut, effective answer that is scalable across a geography as large as Philly, let alone an entire country. I was going to link to a few examples of places that ARE trying to claim to have the answers, and the results are so grossly partisan, unrealistic, and varied I’m not even going to entertain them here.
But let’s wrap things up with our rosier glasses on: there are plenty of small/mid-sized local firms that are doing awesome stuff across the city. Not every single building is going to be a gold-medal winner, but the work from the group below is definitely worth checking out. I’m 100% missing several firms doing wonderful things, so please shout them out below so we can continue to spread the gospel of sexy buildings.
11 GOOD-ASS PHILLY ARCHITECTURE FIRMS (in alphabetical order):
AN HONOROABLE OUT-OF-TOWN SHOUT OUT to Brooklyn-based Brent Buck Architects and their recently wrapped stunner in the area.
I wondered why 6abc was showing a photo of Paris (because of the Olympics, perhaps?) on their noon news when going to a commercial, when I realized it was a view of the parkway from Logan Circle to the Art Museum. Philly needs to keep ALL of its architectural charm intact in every neighborhood!