New Apartments for the Italian Market

Those at Milwood Investment & Development, the group behind Walnut Street's new Cheesecake Factory, want to bring 70 apartments to a vacant lot near 9th and Washington. Like anything in South Philadelphia, neighbors wanted to know about parking.

This photo from PlanPhilly shows a rendering of Milwood's 9th Street Market proposal.

Well, good news for the vehicularly mobile, it comes with 150 parking spaces. For the more aesthetically inclined, the parking will be underground. 

For the architecturally obsessed, you're likely thinking the same thing we thought when we saw 15th and Walnut's wild Cheesecake Factory: Why can't it be 20 stories taller?

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?