Close Encounters of the Broad Street Kind

If you've wandered up North Broad Street recently you may have noticed a series of metal poles dotting the median, or what used to be a median. This is part of an Avenue of the Arts project dating back to 2007, and as Inga Saffron recently pointed out, the lights are the only part of a dormant master planned that survived. 

But I don't think the city duped the Avenue of the Arts into blowing $14M on pork. The Avenue of the Arts as an organization - I'd like to think - is a smart one that uses its funds wisely and efficiently. In fact, if we were duped by anyone, it might be the designers Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and James Carpenter Design.

About a year ago the public was shown flashy renderings of these magnificent torches, but we were shown them as the birds fly or through a telephoto perspective the human eye will never see. As they stand in reality, they are too sparse and widely planted to make any sense on an inner city street, at least not on the blocks north of Callowhill where they stand.

It seems the concept was similar in theory to the Ray King's iridescent Philadelphia Beacons at Broad and Washington: mark the Avenue of the Arts, and the arts will come. Despite whether you find King's Beacons an artistic triumph or not, they were a civic failure. 

The four torches never attracted the arts the Avenue had hoped for, and neither will BCJ and Carpenter's 41. Whether or not they're artistically bad is up for interpretation, from the critics and from those on the street. To date, neither installation has been applauded by anyone but the city, at least no praise that I can find. 

But what if either installation was a tad closer to City Hall, a bit more within the zone we regularly consider the proper Avenue of the Arts? If Ray King's Philadelphia Beacons were at Broad and South they'd pair well with South Street's funky image and similar shimmery installations on South Star Lofts and Suzanne Roberts Theater. 

Similarly, the 55 foot towers along North Broad Street look nonsensical juxtaposed against its low rise backdrop, and where their height makes sense - perhaps next to the Divine Lorraine - they're paired with an urban grit that makes them look like pieces of an incomplete construction project. 

Had they run from Arch Street to Spring Garden where the built environment routinely exceeds the height of the masts, they'd complement the glitzy Pennsylvania Convention Center and the illuminated Academy of the Fine Arts. 

And that's exactly what these masts, like King's Beacons, should be: a compliment, not definition. Because where they stand now defines nothing. In fact, where both installations now stand they detract from the built environment that exists, they shift your focus to these alien landing pads and away from what should be the focus: the street. 

In time, perhaps they will make sense. But the "build it and it will come" approach has failed too many times to excuse the current location of either installation, not when either could have been installed where they belong, and certainly not when the money could have been better spent on making North Broad Street the kind of place someone looking for the Avenue of the Arts would dare venture after dark. 

The Cheesy Corner of 15th and Market

What was once dubbed the "World's Most Elaborate Cheesecake Factory" is now open, complete with valet parking...'cause this ain't the Olive Garden. Anchoring the first floor is a new Verizon store. While Verizon's attempt to rethink cellphone stores as something on scale with Mac, Verizon made no attempt to integrate this location with its unique host. I will give its branded decor one thing: Verizon really knows what people in 1991 thought 2005 might look like.

But the Cheesecake Factory didn't do the building any favors either. Instead of embracing the stellar architecture gracing the corner of 15th and Walnut, the Factory brought in its own branded architecture and slapped it haphazardly on the east end of the facade. 

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's wild building at 15th and Walnut is already being dubbed the "cheesecake building," and that's unfortunate because nothing about this building says "cheesy." The Factory's culinary standards might be a little higher than the OG or Bertucci's, but when it comes to the company that got its start in Beverly Hills, their corporate standards are on par with Johnny Rocket's. 

The Cheesecake Factory is certainly true to their Los Angelean roots: opulence for the sake of opulence without an ounce of restraint. All it needs is a few faux marble columns and some nondescript Roman statuary. It's not what people think of when they think, "Beverly Hills," it is Beverly Hills.

It's really too bad that Philadelphians only had about a week to appreciate the beauty of this building before it was hijacked by chain-store branding tactics, because what stands before us today pales in comparison to the architecture being masked by kitsch. I get it, corporate businesses want to be seen, and truthfully, this isn't nearly as bad a Time's Square Friday's. But Philadelphians - argue with me if you want - set higher standards for our city's aesthetics than New Yorkers.

At least the Cheesecake Factory didn't build the building at 15th and Walnut or we might have wound up with another Hilton Home2 disaster. But the Factory could have used this unique space to create a unique Cheesecake Factory.

The Cheesecake Factory

While Philly Foodies bottleneck the blogosphere criticizing one of the nation's most successful upmarket chain restaurants, the Cheesecake Factory is cooking up their 15^th and Walnut location unimpeded.
 

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architects behind Apple's minimalistic glass cubes, has been hired to develop the site for several tenants. It's unlikely anyone will miss the three buildings being razed for this project, particularly since the former Fleet Bank and Eckerd Drug Store have been vacant.

Local critics have already started raving about BCJ's preliminary renderings of the site as well as the firm's trademarked Apple contract. But like other starchitects, BCJ is selling a brand the way athletes and pop stars sell body wash and perfume.
 

BCJ offers a few I-beams to break the Apple mold, but their signature style is evident in this 15^th and Walnut façade.
 

Why do we continue to applaud architects for an absence of style?
 

Bohlin Cyninski Jackson's rendering of Cheesecake Factory's 15th and Walnut location

 

BCJ's new building won't offend anyone. How could it? In every way, this building is perfect for the Cheesecake Factory. It's deliberately intended to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
 

Architects, particularly national and global firms, are quickly intellectualizing the art out of their craft. Glass curtains, corporate branded design, and canned blueprints are boxes for engineering and market research. A glass cube might be more pleasant to look at than a suburban Hampton Inn, but what makes it more interesting? And more importantly, what makes it cause for praise?
 

Why do we criticize mass appeal at the dinner table, but laud it on the street? Local architecture firms like Erdy-McHenry take risks at smaller venues and experiment with our visual palette only to be criticized as kitsch.

We rave about the latest BYO and rant about its corporate competition, but when the Cheesecake Factory of architecture firms drops another deuce on our city's most premier avenue, the voice of Philadelphia's architecture is starstruck.

It's as hard to criticize this building as it is to praise it. It's not ugly like the new Hilton Home2 Suites at 12^th and Arch, but at both sites the skill is in the unseen engineering required to keep any building from falling over.
 

Hilton Home2 chose to put its engineering inside an abysmal concrete facade. BCJ puts it in a glass cube, like a Swatch watch.
 

It's unfortunate because buildings are relatively permanent. We threw away our translucent telephones when we realized how stupid they were, but architecture can't afford to be a fad.

As important as a critique of any building is how we react to it. Like a fine meal at a local restaurant, good architecture often offends as many as it inspires.
 

Modern architecture at any point will inevitably face a point at which it needs to await renewed appreciation as history. Victorian architecture was reviled for years and we are just now revisiting Brutalism.
 

How will history view our most contemporary modern architecture? Will our successors admire the craftsmanship? Its lack of presence? Will society have entirely schooled the design out of design and face a cityscape of prefabricated shipping containers?

 

Or will the future recognize the gimmickry in modern art, expect more from those we hire to sculpt our cities, and put BCJ's glass cubes up on eBay next to our Swatch watches and translucent telephones?

Station Square

At the other end of Market Street, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (Liberty Bell Center) designed a beautiful plan for 30th Street Station. Pedestrian, transit, and cab friendly, I would love to arrive in Philadelphia to this scene rather than the mess of concrete barriers and traffic there now.