We CAN Demand Better

Remember when we were supposed to get this...

...or this...

...and got this?

What happened? Well, the first two renderings were for a proposed W Hotel and Residences at 12th and Arch, now underway at 15th and Chestnut. The third is the Hilton Home2 Suites, a commercially branded turd of corporate anti-design meant to offer guests a sense of familiarity...like a Turnpike Pizza Hut-turned-Chinese buffet that everyone still recognizes as a Pizza Hut, and probably still smells like one.

Once the epitome of grandeur and high society, the problem with today's rent-by-the-week architecture is that it's designed for those who see a city for only a week. They offer a comfortable bed, free WiFi, continental breakfast, and a gateway to the action. But what they leave for locals is a concrete shell cased in trademarked colors and adorned with plastic signage that has nothing to do with a city.

And they honestly have no reason to care. Their investment isn't in Philadelphians, it's in schlepping rooms at a competitive price from architecture that requires the littlest overhead.

In fact, with the exception of a few chain hotels operating out of buildings that were too historic to demolish, we have no iconic, big chain hotels that were built in the last twenty years. We have the Courtyard Marriott, the Residence Inn, the Ritz-Carlton, and of course the Loews Hotel at the PSFS Building. But when it comes to new construction, even Marriott settles. 

The outliers of branded design are high-end hotels, and in Philadelphia, only when accompanied by condos. The Ritz Residences, the W Hotel and Divine Lorraine under construction, and the proposed SLS International all offer units for both visitors, and locals who have to look at Philadelphia every day. If you need proof that corporate hotel design is a product of its tenants, there you have it. 

Pearl Properties is about to drop the first meaningful deuce on South Broad since the '70s, the prestigious Avenue of the Arts. Where a grimy parking garage still barely stands, Pearl will build the Cambria Hotel and Suites. Cambria is owned by Choice Hotels, the company behind brands like Econo Lodge and Roadway Inn, and its design isn't surprising. 

Few renderings show the entire building because it's just that boring.

Fabrezing the site's former parking garage could have at least earned it the title of polished shit, but the Cambria Hotel isn't even interesting enough to criticize. Its boring facade is deliberately designed to fade into the background on an Avenue where everything else was born to shine.

Like them or not, everything built on the Avenue since the 1980s - the Doubletree, Kimmel Center, Symphony House, 777 - was built to impress; to reflect, compliment, or contrast the Avenue's historic beauties. Heinous as some may be to the modern eye, they were all built with a message in mind.

What's ironic is that while we're embroiled in battles over local projects like Blatstein's contentious monolith at Broad and Washington, bickering over towers near Rittenhouse Square, the powers-that-be behind this commercialized brand of corporate architecture know exactly how to play the game. They know the zoning rules, and they don't challenge them. 

Whereas Starwood's plans for a well designed tower at 12th and Arch once drew a bit of anxiety from neighbors because of its height, Hilton's Home2 didn't because it couldn't. It didn't challenge the rules, it played by them. There was, and still is, nothing in place to challenge truly hideous, or just plain boring design, as long as it jives with the zoning in place. The city's Civic Design Review can hold a meeting, but it's ultimate verdict is only a recommendation. And it rarely gets involved in projects that don't challenge the city's zoning ordinances. 

Pearl's Cambria Hotel probably won't have any adverse impacts on the Avenue of the Arts, at least not in terms of the street's vibrancy. The building is too boring to stand out as an eyesore, and in Philadelphia we're still of the mindset that something is better than nothing. The Cambria will put more feet on the ground and more people on the Avenue, and it will provide the litmus test Pearl thinks it needs to move forward with its stunning SLS International Hotel and Residences nearby. 

"Boring" hotels used to look like this.

But it does set a new precedent at an address where every developer has at least tried since the early '80s, a precedent that says commercially branded design is okay at one of the city's most coveted addresses. If we're smart, we'll look at this as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, what the city allows, and decide whether the Civic Design Review should be granted true authority over what gets built. And personally, with the right people involved, I think it should.

There is a lot of developable land on South Broad and even more on North Broad, and unless we change our attitude and begin to demand better design, we can expect a lot more Cambrias and Hilton Home2s on our premier avenues. They're the ones with the money to make it happen, but they're also the ones with the means to offer Philadelphia the designs it truly deserves. And we do deserve better. We're Philadelphia, for crying out loud, and we need to wake up and realize what that means. 

Fashion Plates: Architecture Edition

Up in Port Fishington (I think that's a thing), Naked Philly found some interesting homes at Sepviva and Firth. Something about these houses makes me want to play Q*bert.

Q*bert

What can I say? They're fun houses on a corner that needed a flea dip. And if those plastic panels don't start to fade and crack in a year or two, they're pretty easy to wipe down with Windex.

But checkerboard court up in Kens- Fish- Port- ...that neighborhood, isn't in a truly vetted area. Architects can choose to be daring, or just cheap and boring. However, the use of these snap-on panels is running rampant in neighborhoods that demand better design and better materials. 

Okay, that's kinda cool.

From Goldtex Apartments to 1900 Arch to the proposed Hudson Hotel, we're being duped into confusing exciting architecture with the thrifty tactic of slapping multicolored plastic panels on otherwise dull buildings. 

Norman Foster's tallest-in-Philly on one corner, and...this, on the other.

Architects are dangling a shiny set of keys in our face and we respond with, "ooh, colors." But these quasi-futuristic row homes and apartment buildings aren't anything special. Most aren't even interesting enough to be ugly. Their best attribute may only be the fact that once the style has run its course, it will be that much easier to replace the facade with the next trend. 

In the case of the Hudson Hotel, that might be the deliberate plan. Once we tire of block long plastic barcodes, this shoehorned suburban Aloft is a ready built shell that can be refaced with whatever comes next. 

That's the same ledgestone veneer found on every suburban Bonefish Grill in the country, available at Home Depot.

Sheathing boring buildings with randomly placed color panels is probably the cheapest way to be trendy. But even Hudson's street-facing facade is riddled with already dated materials that scream "King of Prussia strip mall."

The sad truth is hotel goers rarely care about a hotel's architecture, just the amenities. Hudson is catering to people who don't care what Philadelphia looks like, just the spa treatments. That experience can be wedged into any structure, even one as piss-poor as the Hilton Home2 at 12th and Arch.

From Sepviva and Firth's monochromatic corner to pricy parcels near Rittenhouse Square, it's hard to wonder if these designs are simply the trends of the times, or if developers are commissioning something cheap and modular. I can hear the sales pitch, "Want to decorate for the holidays? Snap on some red and green panels, or blue and silver for Hanukkah. Easter? Mix and match!" 

Maybe this is the future of design in the ever changing and ever fickle new Millennium: Fashion Plates for home design.

Why we should have expected Hilton Home2

Either my Google skills are lagging behind or I didn't bother to do an image search for Hilton Home2 when I (and everyone else) was criticizing the turd at 12th and Arch before, during, and after construction.

It's hideous, and could have been better. Even despite construction costs, a nicer color palette isn't more expensive. Philadelphia has been unanimous - a rare feat Hilton accomplished - that this building didn't have to look like this.

Except that it did.

We spent hours on blogs and articles steaming over an inevitability, critiquing architecture that really can't even be called that, while the whole time the proof was out there, on the internet and around the country, of exactly what this building had to look like.

Take a look:



Tennessee

North Carolina

Utah

See something familiar? Turd is Hilton Home2's signature color.

We've been running ourselves ragged over the architecture of a company that employed an architect with no creative control.

We all know what a McDonald's or a Walmart is going to look like. In my short time in DC I saw no less than five CVS's level historic property for their trademarked faux Victorian (if it can even be called that) corner stores. When that happens, we don't critique the architecture, we critique the business.

This didn't deserve the energy any of us put into assessing the design. We should have been doing what we'd do if Walmart wanted to drop a store on Market Street and told Hilton, we don't want your business.



Hilton Home2 Suites

Perhaps one of the worst architectural trends to emerge from the second half of the 20th Century is corporate branded design. Not only is it a cheap way to reuse blue prints, but the design is underwhelming, not just because it's cost effective, but because consumers remember simplistic design easier than good architecture, and recycled facades serve as their own advertisements.

To add insult to injury, corporate design is impossible to reuse. When my hometown decided to expand its county offices, a vacant Safeway was chosen as the site. Even though it was rebuilt complete with a clock tower, Safeway's signature Quonset Hut roof can't be ignored. And who hasn't seen at least one 80's era Bonanza serving as a Chinese buffet? 

While many upscale hotels, at least in large urban cores, have chosen to occupy historic office buildings, many others have carried their corporate branding far beyond signage, sharing the same approach as roadside Super 8's. Hilton Home2 Suites at 12th and Arch is no exception.

Not only is Home2's design scene only design in the most technical sense of the word, worse, it doesn't care. It's ugly, deliberately ugly. And why shouldn't it be? People are brand loyal, and for anyone loyal to the Home2 brand, these abominations are impossible to miss. Surrounded by gracefully reused Marriott properties and the respectfully preserved Loew's PSFS Building, Hilton isn't even pretending to care about Philadelphia.

It's irresponsible. To those residing at Home2, it's conveniently located across the street from the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Reading Terminal Market. But those residing at Home2 aren't Philadelphians and will rarely consider that this building is nothing but a middle finger to our portfolio of historic and modern architecture.

The choice of Hilton's executives to use branded design becomes even more insulting when you consider the fact that this was the site of a proposed W Hotel that was (and I never use this world lightly) fabulous. You have to wonder if Hilton's corporate architects even visited the site. But again, this building wasn't designed for Philadelphians, or even with Philadelphians in mind, so why bother? In almost any case, anything is better than a surface parking lot, but perhaps not here.

The W Hotel, once proposed for 12th and Arch.

Community activists routinely protest handsome residential developments, pushing local developers out of town. Yet when a billion dollar corporation decided to drop this bomb at a major intersection, a corporation that can afford to employ better design, our voices were silent. The fact that a parking garage that recently opened chose to grace its façade with an ounce of pizazz is all you need to know to recognize that this hotel is an absolute disaster.

Better Than Nothing?

Hilton Home2 Suites released its rendering for the corporation's second spot on the Pennsylvania Convention Center's Arch Street strip and it begs the question, is something better than nothing?

As the Roaring 2000's brought us back to an era of opulence few remember and architectural experimentation headlined our newspapers, the answer was certainly a resounding "NO". Only in recent history have few chains of hotels attempted to rival the decadence and luxury of the Gilded Age, but for the most part, even historically, hotels do little to serve those who make their homes in the shadows of these businesses.

It makes sense, at least business sense, especially around convention centers, arenas, and corporate hubs. Hotels are in the business of serving those who don't live here, and unless you're one of the few who can't travel without courtesy robes and a plasma screen TV displaying a crackling fire, your hotel room is going to be remembered as little more than a comfortable bed and a convenient location. That's where Hilton Home2 Suites is better than nothing.

In all reality, most cities are filled with nondescript boxes that can be easily sold and rebranded when they change hands. Only in our rosie memories of the past 10 years are buildings like this less than par. While one would undoubtedly prefer the W Hotel's previous proposal for 12th and Arch, one can't guarantee that this robust economy will return anytime soon. One also can't guarantee that a W Hotel at 12th and Arch would be more than an empty edifice in this economy had it been built without a business savvy consideration for its future.

As the decade continues, middle class families are cashing in their frequent flier miles for road trips to the Poconos in the Family Truckster. The trips we remember from our childhood weren't bad, but it wasn't a time that warranted boutique hotels in every neighborhood.

Hotels like Hilton Home2 Suites serve a market, and the fact that the market is there is a very good thing. While you won't be overwhelmed by a new skyscraper across from Reading Terminal, the new hotel will put a few hundred beds in proximity of dozens of local businesses.

Infill isn't evil. Passerbys will still be greeted with groundfloor retail, and when they look up, they will still see the beautiful Reading Terminal Headhouse and the PSFS Tower.

Philadelphia and cities across America were offered a reprise from the architecturally mundane for one of the brief periods that only come along when investors are reckless and banks fail to watch their reserves.

These short timelines of opulence leave us with dazzling wonders of engineering muscle, but they're financed by the dreams of those asleep at the wheel.

Could Hilton Home2 Suites be better? Of course it could. But now that we've awoken from the dream, practical infill will increasingly become the best case scenario. This doesn't mean we should stop campaigning against the status quo, but it does mean that the resources of those who campaign for a better city should go where they are needed.