Boredom and the Two Towers

When Sandy Smith at PhillyMag.com dubbed Cecil Baker a "starchitect," I was taken a bit back. Not necessarily because it was printed, Philadelphia Magazine loves touting our own. Rather because Sandy Smith is so well versed in Philadelphia's history, particularly our architectural heritage, that it seemed odd to pair Baker next to our revered starchitects of yesteryear: Frank Furness, Willis G. Hale, William Decker, Wilson Eyre, Samuel Sloan...you get the idea. 

More so, Cecil Baker was the expert consulting on the article's primary point: "How Philly Can Avoid a Skyline of Bland Boxy High-Rises." Yet Cecil Baker's most recent, notable contributions to Center City's skyline aren't exactly avant garde works of art. Comparable cities like Chicago and Miami have erected Zaha Hadid's skysrcapers, Milwaukee has a Santiago Calatrava, and Seattle's main library was designed by Rem Koolhaas. Sure, we've got Lord Norman Foster's CITC rising, a couple Cesar Pellis, and Frank Gehry futzing around the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But when it comes to in-house architects and local firms, Cecil Baker's reputation as a near-starchitect has more to do with his proliferation than it does any sort of signature style.

To his credit, Baker does give our daring architects their own due, noting Interface Studio, Erdy-McHenry, DIGSAU, Tim McDonald, MGA Partners, and Qb3, any of which might be better equipped to comment on the threat of potentially boring, mid-rise infill. Cecil Baker's latest standouts are fine buildings, and it might be unfair to call them "bland" or "boxy." One Riverside, despite the unfinished appearance of its roofline (I don't know why he didn't finish the top floor with glass), complements its surroundings much better than neighborhood groups had warned. Likewise, 500 Walnut, nearing completion, doesn't distract from its historic surroundings. In fact, the east wall angles away from Walnut Street deliberately to keep its presence in photos of Independence Hall to a minimum. 

Both towers try to blend seamlessly into their backgrounds and surroundings. But that is exactly what keeps Cecil Baker from being a starchitect. 500 Walnut's neighboring buildings are far from unobtrusive. Next-door, a Brutalist tower flanks an Egyptian Revival facade. At the west end of the block, a classical office building flexes its marble muscle. None of these buildings, nor Independence Hall itself, are exercises in understatement. They're products of their eras designed to send a specific message, each a piece of the architectural anthropology of our city and nation. 

What does Cecil Baker have to say?

Such diluted lack of panache is more excusable at One Riverside, along the Schuylkill Banks where neighbors demanded the built environment not encroach into recreational park space. But across from Independence Hall, long the site of commerce and construction, 500 Walnut's lack of prowess is distracting where it's designed to disappear into the sky. 500 Walnut makes its block look incomplete, unfinished, like the roofline of One Riverside. 

This deliberate lack of presence is far from exclusive to Cecil Baker. In fact, it's become incredibly common. BLT's East Market is designed to pay homage to the famed PSFS Building across the street. While BLT breaks up the monotony of East Market's super-block by varying the designs of both towers and the renovated Family Court building, the southwest tower is set back atop a curved podium that reflects the PSFS Building itself. This respects and retains the views of the PSFS Building, and the curved wall's homage is commendable, but when concessions trend into how a design will be indefinitely perceived, we lose the sense of confidence that once dominated the field of architecture.

A stone's throw from Baker's 500 Walnut are I. M. Pei's Society Hill Towers. Now a star amongst meager planets, Pei boldly redefined Society Hill by starkly breaking from the neighborhood's recreated Colonial norm. To this day, Society Hill Towers are both adored and abhorred, but they generate conversation, even from passersby who don't care to know anything about architecture. That's why I. M. Pei is featured prominently in architectural textbooks. It's hard to imagine anything designed by Cecil Baker finding its way into the classroom, but it's not hard to imagine how unsatisfying Society Hill Towers would be had an architect like Baker been commissioned for I. M. Pei's project. 

When Philadelphia Magazine set out to uncover how to avoid becoming a city of "Bland, Boxy High-Rises," Smith went to a firm building just that. That's not to say Baker has designed anything bad. He didn't design Symphony House. But at least at Symphony House, BLT made a statement with a classical design, unfortunately undermined with cheap materials and construction. At Symphony House, Carl Dranoff wasn't just building a tower to sell units, he and BLT were attempting to build a legacy. And that's the exact problem with market rate architects like Cecil Baker, at least where design is concerned. Like most projects today, their buildings are designed solely with profit in mind, and that means skirting the negative press of rogue artistry. They design buildings cram packed with amenities without risking too much visibility. 

The most sellable design lands firmly in the status quo. If we want to avoid a skyline of "Bland, Boxy High-Rises," our most prolific architects need to dare to define something new, not just build what moves the most units. More importantly, we need developers willing to hire firms that do just that - firms like Erdy-McHenry and Qb3 - and not just firms that seem safe. The "Bland, Boxy" skyline will become the urban answer to cul de sacs full of McMansions if developers, and their consumers, aren't willing to embrace the truly avant garde, even the wacky. 

Artistic innovation happens and new styles are being developed - in Manhattan, Dubai, Beijing, and London - but as Philadelphia becomes more of a bedroom community for out-priced New Yorkers and Washingtonians, our residents are looking at our skyline with less of a sense of pride and more pragmatism. That's boring. We gave architecture history Louis Kahn and Edmund Bacon. Are we winding down to a point of complacency, or are we waiting for the next homegrown starchitect to force us to demand more.

Dranoff's Better One Riverside

Carl Dranoff's One Riverside has a undergone a redesign for the better, in so many ways. For one, it simply looks better. I

Its formerly bland glass infill has been redesigned as an iconic and towering showcase for the Schuylkill River's emerging skyline. But even more astounding, Dranoff managed to appease neighbors previously opposed to the project by putting its parking underground and setting the tower back from the community garden.

Read Inga Saffron's story here.

Personally, I may have been one of the few not opposed to Dranoff's previous design. I see community gardens as temporary infill, even those as pleasant as the one along 25th Street. Like even the most beautiful murals, they satisfy a vacant place until something better comes along. By better, I mean tenants. But Fitler Square's community garden may have proven itself a worthy permanence. And admittedly, it is quite beautiful and designed for such permanence.

Likewise, Carl Dranoff has proven himself a developer truly vested in not only appealing to Philadelphia, but being a Philadelphian himself. Through the architects at Cecil Baker + Partners, he willingly worked with concerned neighbors to develop his site with their concerns in mind, and in the end created a better building.

Development Along the Schuylkill River

In recent years the success of the Schuylkill Banks and plans for additional improvements have inadvertently called residential developers into action. The Banks is an urban Cinderella Story. Historically industrial railroad space, few ever thought the flood plain two stories below Center City would ever find itself as a role model for urban parks.

But architecturally, the Banks poses a challenge. Through most of Center City, the Schuylkill River isn't graded with the city's built environment, it's recessed well below. Particularly between JFK and Walnut, it's recessed more like the Chicago River than a place ever meant for cyclists and joggers. In fact many early master plans for JFK, West Market Street, and 30th Street Station envisioned the river's east bank looking a lot more like its west. Rightly, developers are eager to offer residents a piece of the river, but it's not as simple as building condos on Miami Beach.

How do developers best ferry their elevated tenants to the park below without alienating recreationalists and hurting the peaceful setting the Banks provides?

Recently, three towering proposals have called this into question. In the heart of the city surrounded by skyscrapers, towering apartment buildings along the river won't diminish the park's experience in their own right. However being on a flood plain, these projects must be elevated to the streets above. Each of these proposals has remedied that obstacle by putting their tenants atop a parking podium. Unfortunately, that puts the least desirable element, a parking stump, face to face with the Schuylkill Banks.

Many have come out against these projects, namely due to the vast concrete walls that will face the river. Are foes of these projects simply echoing the the media, or should these developers be sent back to their drawing boards?

Is it possible to address the architectural need to elevate these towers without distracting from the pleasures of the park? Is there an alternative? If there is no alternative, is sending developers elsewhere for the sake of a park worth abandoning the benefits these projects offer the city above?

But really, are these parking garages that different than the built space that already faces the Banks? The park still sits on an industrial artery, beside and below railroad tracks. Anyone who's spent time on the river knows that the Central Banks often peer into the dark recesses of the city's underground.

2400 Chestnut and the PECO Tower already sidle up to the Banks, offering as much or less to the river than the recent proposals. Neither diminish the park's experience, but simply remind recreationalists that the Banks is a very urban park. Where were those agitated by the inevitable residential interest in the river when critics were gushing over the proposed Mandeville Place? The vistas offered along the Schuylkill River are directed at University City's growing crystalline skyline, but Center City's presence is incidental and always will be.
The Schuylkill Banks will not be abandoned because of a series of parking podiums, only find an increased demand by the tenants in the towers above. Perhaps more importantly, these projects will help bridge the cognitive divide between Center City and University City, creating a much greater urban core.

 

Residential Development and the Status Quo

Carl Dranoff is no stranger to scrutiny. It's not surprising. While his designs are often unassuming and sometimes ridiculed, his firm is also synonymous with Philadelphia residential development.

While many have criticized the bland tower that rose from the site of the Sidney Hillman Medical Center, few have dropped the name of its developer, the John Buck Company, because it isn't a household name.

But both developers share the same struggle: appeasing lots and lots of tenants.

Dranoff's proposed One Riverside Park won't win any awards. Even in the design phase, we know it never will. Dranoff's bland designs are deliberate. Symphony House and 777 South Broad are his most unique, but they still echo tested design.

He's not a visionary, he's a businessman. Instead of hiring award winning firms that design iconic buildings, he hires ones that design buildings that rent quickly.

Heaving the weight of this reality on Dranoff's firm isn't entirely fair. There are plenty of developers in Philadelphia scarring our city with lesser architecture, or worse, bulldozing our history for parking lots from their mansions in New Jersey.

Dranoff is just the most visible because, perhaps, he's the most ambitious.

He's leaving a legacy on the city he loves. Respectably, he stands behind his properties in the face of criticism, deserved or not, and most of his buildings aren't significant enough to be ugly.

Dranoff is no Frank Furness, and perhaps that's where people get confused. He isn't an architect. He's a developer catering to families and suburban refugees looking for comfort and amenities, the kind of people we see jogging the Schuylkill Trail at 5am as we weirdos return from the all night clothing optional rave in Baltimore.

His demographic might cock their heads quizzically at the unique architecture popping up around University City, along New York's High Line, or even the Murano or the Residences at the Ritz. They're easy to appease, but easily turned off by the unfamiliar.

Basically, his market has a conservative eye. But that's where the money is. Dranoff knows this, and instead of trading potential tenants for unique design, he plays it safe and caters to the broadest market possible. Right now in Philadelphia that's the upper middle class ex-suburbanite who wants a home near the park, ample parking, and to live in something that blends into the background.

It's easy to call out other cities in comparison, but even New York is still churning out plenty of boring rectangular cubes to accommodate the status quo. New York and Chicago simply build so much that they have more gems to stand out.

Still, Dranoff's projects and weak design aren't entirely excused by this vast demand for the ordinary. Hilton Home2's developer citied construction costs to excuse his architectural disaster and he couldn't have been more knee-deep in bull ****.

It's true, it costs a lot to build in Philadelphia, but turning a building on an odd angle, adding unorthodox materials, or selecting a unique color palette doesn't up the construction costs.

Philadelphia is saddled with cost prohibitive situations, but that lies in construction, not design. There is no architecture union in Philadelphia that I'm aware of, and if there is, H2L2 and Erdy-McHenry aren't working against each other to produce the lowest common denominator.

Edgy and interesting design doesn't have to be cost prohibitive when it comes time to build, and Dranoff has the money to hire an architect with an eye for the unique. We know this because Post Brothers hired a firm to design a much more interested renovation at 12th and Wood and proved that Philadelphia's costly prohibitions aren't in themselves requirements, just a daily headache.

However Dranoff seems uninterested in ruffling the feathers of the city's unions. Post Brothers' renovations at the Goldtex, while visually unique, aren't structurally unique.

Dranoff could easily employ an edgy design firm to help him adorn the Schuylkill River, but that isn't what he does. Dranoff's reluctance to build an iconic high rise on the Schuylkill Banks is marketing, and a business move to sell his beds as fast as possible.

One Riverside

What happens when a city produces a wildly successful riverfront park? Well turns out people want to live there. Take note, DRWC.

In what skyscraper nerds are hoping is the second of many high rise apartment buildings to line the Schuylkill Banks, Dranoff Properties hopes to join The Grove by adding 21 stories to Center City's side of the river. Architecture nerds are hoping that it looks good.

The new high rise would replace a surface parking lot at 25th and Locust near Fitler Square. The high density dwelling proposed at an already impressive location will undoubtedly raise the eyebrows of its posh brownstone dwelling neighbors. 

However, ironic as it is, Center City West residents are often less resistant to new developments than their residential counterparts in more transitional neighborhoods just outside Center City, especially when those projects erase scarring surface lots.

Until a rendering is released, most of the leeriness will probably stem from Dranoff's reputation for hokey neo-classical design and cheap materials.

The Grove will soon be the Schuylkill River's newest high rise addition.