The Strand East

How many frustrated white people does it take to assemble a town with hex keys and mashed potato board? We'll soon find out. The Swedish retailer, IKEA, is building an entire neighborhood in East London. I'm just hoping that the buildings will have names like Linberpank and Krud.


It's called The Strand East. I'm not sure why. I'm not going to bother to Bablefish it. I'm sure it's a nonsensical Scandanavian word. It couldn't possibly, simply mean "strand."


Beyond the absurd imagery that comes from an entire town made out of IKEA furniture, the endless jokes you could make about quality of construction, the most humorous quality might be in the cliched rhetoric that reads straight from the Yupster's Bible (Yes, I combined Hipsters and Yuppies).


As if a town built entirely by the capital of obscure mainstream wasn't enough to appeal to the organic breast milk ice cream eating British trendies, the town will be devoid of cars and operate on hydroelectric power. Its most entertaining feature might be the organically shaped "creative zone intended for creative-minded businesses." In other words the designers had some space left over and didn't know what to do with it so they filled it in with some buzz words.

An open, organically shaped public space? Isn't that the same Rogerian philosophy that gave us all the UFO buildings built in the 60s and 70s? Those circular schools with one hallway that had no beginning or end? I've literally had nightmares about Wynne Hall at Longwood College. 


Every room was "organic" as to allow for "creative and collective debate." You know what they found out? People don't like organic spaces. They like sitting in a row in a square room with a clearly defined front and back. Even in art class. 


You know what you get in one undefined organic "creative space" without a leader? You certainly don't get "creative-minded businesses." You get a crowd of angry, unbathed idiots talking about how great anarchy is. 


Oh, and I almost forgot. This throw back to our bat shit crazy mid-Century attempts to rewrite a concept as old as homo-sapiens - civilization - wouldn't be complete without some completely Jetsonian, quasi-futuristic oddities. 


Like the moving sidewalks and push button kitchen cabinetry the 1950s promised we'd see everywhere by now, The Strand East will remove trash from its units with a series of vacuum tubes a lot like the ones used at your bank's drive through window. Hang on to your animals and small children. Sometimes it's just easier to take out the trash yourself.


The one good thing about IKEAville is it's cheap, and when it melts in the rain, its entire replacement comes in a box designed specifically to fit into your 1988 Saab 900.

Philadelphia's Doing Just Fine

Daniel Stone's Daily Beast article isn't painful to read because it points out Philadelphia's flaws. It isn't annoying because he refers to Urban Outfitters as an "older, legacy" company. It isn't even annoying that his familiarity with Philadelphia is limited to cheesesteaks. 


No, the thing that annoys me about Daniel Stone and the Daily Beast (which makes the Huffington Post look boringly objective) is that he used a single study (conducted by Philadelphia's own Pew) and an apocalyptic photo of our skyline to make Philadelphia sound like it was a recently Utopian reserve now barely clinging to a cliff a few miles above Hell.

Hell

I'm not even going to begin to detail the inaccuracies in his assertions. They have all been beautifully summarized in Patricia Kerkstra's Inquirer article, here. You can also find more reliable and inclusive information in the comments section of Stone's article, usually reserved for misinformed rants that sound a lot like the article itself. 


As pathetic as this article is, there's silver in the muck he's raking. The fact that bloggers like Stone are citing Philadelphia's woes as a way to make them feel better about their free falling investments in cities like New York and Washington means that Philadelphia, even with our problems, has arrived. 


Twenty years ago, pretentious snobs in the Silicone Valley thought that Philadelphia was a little city "somewhere in Pennsylvania." Today our purported plight is national news, leaving us scratching our heads and wondering how this is newsworthy. After all, Philadelphia today is the Bizarro World's opposite of Philadelphia in 1992. And we're humble about that. 


So many other cities are populated with people that love to claim their home is the greatest place in the world. San Franciscans can't get enough of themselves, New York is "the center of the universe," and DC is still a little town on the Potomac bankrolled by the rest of the country full of so much ego it makes Los Angeles look genuine. 


But Philadelphia is a funny place. We know we're dirty, we kind of like it. I find myself defending Philadelphia weekly from blind hatred around the world, usually ceding with, "well, I like the grit." 


We know we're dangerous, we know we're poor, and we know we have nothing to prove (except when it comes to sports). So many other places are just as poor and just as dangerous, yet they profess to be bastions of perfection and idealism. 


We embrace our flaws and maybe that's what pisses people off. We're diverse, truly diverse, and we like it. Other cities like Portland love to tout their liberal ideology of tolerance; but black, white, green, or orange, they're all upper middle class Judeo-Christians that drive Jettas. San Franciscans are free to criticize Philadelphia's socioeconomic diversity as soon as they start carrying Oakland on their shoulders. 


We put up with a lot of shit in Philadelphia, shit that douche bags like Stone could never put up with. Instead of extending us props for being the most tolerant grab bag of DNA in the country, they tell us we're poor, ugly, sick, and teetering on the brink of self-destruction. 


We truly are bad ass. Chicks dig us. Guys want to be us. And the losers at the dork table can't stand that we set the bar for cool. 


Philadelphians aren't dealing with anything we weren't dealing with 20 years ago. In fact we're doing better, but I'm a Philadelphian so I don't need no brag. If you're reading this from you iPad in Griffith Park you can go online and see, like you, we're doing fine in some places and not so fine in others. That's right, Philadelphia is a big city. 


We've got some rich people, some poor people, some smart people, some stupid people. We've got big business and small business, good business and bad business. 


What's more, compared to most major metropolitan areas we fared the recession significantly better for the simple fact that we didn't try to be New York. We weathered the recession because we ignored the balloon. After all, we're too cool to be Park Slope South.


While Miami tries to figure out what to do with their forest of uninhabited skyscrapers and San Francisco smugly ignores the fact that they hid their poor people in the suburbs, Philadelphians are pioneering the revitalization of new neighborhoods and topping global lists for parks, museums, singles, food, and everything in between. 


Sounds like a death spiral to me, Daniel Stone.

Post Brothers Apartments

While a handful of protesters continue to picket the rehabilitation of the infamous "Graffiti Building" at 12th and Wood, Post Brothers has unveiled a sign of their own.


Today, a giant banner hung from one of the top floors of the long neglected warehouse read "Post Brothers Apartments," signifying development is moving full steam ahead unphased by Philadelphia's Union Muscle.


For months, a rotating collection of Colorform laden signage spouted accusations that Post Brothers were "destroying community standards" to commuters along 12th Street.


I'd personally like to say thank you Post Brothers for investing in MY community's standards.

City says Divine Lorraine will not be demolished

A "Repair or Demolish" notification posted by L&I delivered a second punch to preservationists following a fire at the Divine Lorraine, abandoned by investors.


Fear not. Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger stated that the notification was a necessary measure allowing the city to enter the building and intervene.


A bill for all repairs made by the city will be sent to the building's owners, Michael Treacy, Jr. and a Dutch group, on top of the $700,000 in back taxes they currently owe.


Meanwhile the city is working with the New York bank that holds the mortgage to find a new owner ready and willing to develop the property.

Art and Craftsmanship

It's hard to say how many well known artists, if any, are capable of the level of craftsmanship carried out by the Masters, not to mention the tradesmen that worked to adorn our historic architecture.

Art wasn't always open to anyone with an idea or a statement, and while the wealthy have and still define art, the practice and its subsequent respect wasn't limited to "the starving artist."


What happened?


Just a century ago we were graced with a stock or artists and architects so talented that the works of Willis Hale and Philadelphia City Hall were perceived eyesores.


But today we praise glass towers for their lack of presence, automotive design that continues to look like a 1989 Ford Taurus, and visual art that refuses to offer a vision beyond its explanation.


Has our culture gotten so smart that we no longer need something interesting to look at, or have we intellectualized the design right out of design?


Whether a way of expressing spiritual enlightenment or national pride, or simply painting us a fox hunting scene, the one thing art historically required of its artists was skill.


The art community's obsession with its artists' messages has grown so strong that it overshadows the art itself.


Art should attract the eye, followed by an understanding of its inspiration. Instead we look for the story first and neglect to realize that we're analyzing a blank canvas.


If many of our modern day artists are masters of anything, it's marketing. The "trained" eyes of the art experts are so blinded by their own wealth that they'd never suspect their beloved artists of being some of the Free World's greatest capitalists.

Art or Copyright Infringement?

Apologizing for an artist's impoverished upbringing, the Philadelphia Museum of Art displays photographs of nothing in the same building that Renaissance masterpieces call home.


Artists offer our elite art community an insight into their humble beginnings and then capitalize on their guilt, exploiting their audiences as much as their subjects, feeding off the same morbid fascination with the ill, disfigured, and poor that keeps TLC on the air.


Talentless snobs may define this as art to help them sleep at night, but they share an obsession for the plight of the downtrodden with the rest of society.


Sadly the art community has become so tainted with an affinity for crap that the very sight of anything painted or sculpted displaying an ounce of craftsmanship or skill is labeled kitsch.


Have we exhausted new ideas? Are we in a creative rut? Or has an elite society fostered an element where hacks aren't subject to the same standards as the schooled and talented?


As much as we love history, critics will continue to reserve their most harsh critiques for historic recreations demanding artistic interpretations like Venturi's Benjamin Franklin house in lieu of The American Philosophical Society.


The gracefully adorned and architecturally respectful Mormon Temple will be dubbed a monumental shrine to a bygone era while we applaud a new Mac store's glass facade.


And paintings of horses that look like horses will be stored in the basement so the Philadelphia Museum of Art can exhibit another collection of snapshots of your next door neighbor's Walmart grill.

The PMA could find its modern art on Etsy and no one would know the difference.

How Low Can You Go?

The building frenzy in Manhattan isn't slowing down anytime soon. While Callowhill residents use the success of the High Line to justify their own park in the sky, New Yorkers are citing their own success to dig deeper. Literally.


It's being called the LowLine, and designers Dan Barasch and James Ramsey have secured an unprecedented $125,000 in donations.


Using modern technology to redirect sunlight they envision a subterranean park occupying an abandoned subway line, 60,000 square feet in all.

It sounds pretty spectacular, and if Manhattan was the vertical city of moving sidewalks and mile high gardens Hugh Ferriss once predicted, underground parks might sound less like science fiction and more like necessity.


But as crowded as New York is, it is just another big city. It has some of the most beautiful parks in the world, one of the biggest system of urban parks in the country, and dozens of neighborhoods lit by the sun that the streets of Bladerunner and The Fifth Element lacked.


Kudos on an exciting concept but that's what it is. If New York is blessed with enough wealthy eccentrics and a tax surplus large enough to ignore schools and services, more power to them. But most urbanites don't even like shopping indoors, and the LowLine is little more than a mall's concourse without stores. At best it's a nice quasi outdoor reprieve for joggers on a rainy day.

Financing a Vision

GroJLart at Philaphilia is quickly becoming my favorite "architectural nonsense" blogger in Philadelphia. His latest rant about the dead Bridgeman's View proposal for the waterfront got me reminiscing about a time long ago when we were still building houses we couldn't afford, buying gas guzzling SUVs we didn't need, and openly challenging the country's 1% to transform city skylines around the globe. The year was 2007, a distant memory filled with shopping sprees, cosmopolitans at the latest Steven Starr incarnations, and nights full of unapologetic laughter.

Oh, how I miss the laughter.

Perhaps that's what's so refreshing about GroJLart. Sure, his snarky rants probably trigger your kid's parental controls, but his dark humor applauds our wealthy developers for their inspired visions while berating them when they sell out. No nonsense, no politics, and when a building is just plain ugly, he says it's just plain ugly.

In the enlightened era before smart phones and a pantheon of reality television dedicated to the children spawned by the Jersey Shore, Bridgeman's View went beyond the conventional skyscraper and attempted to maximize what could be done with a glass curtain. In fact, it's unique coiled design might have been better suited to the shores of Dubai than the banks of the Delaware.

Bridgeman's View was more than another skyscraper. Had it been proposed for West Market Street we might be looking at it right now. But Bridgeman's View was an concept and offered a vision beyond occupying another vacant lot.

While it would have housed million dollar condos, it also sought to anchor a new neighborhood. Surrounded by projects that undoubtedly relied on the confidence of Bridgeman's View to turn a forlorn stretch of Delaware Avenue into its own urban core, it was surrounded by shopping, restaurants, bars, and may have encouraged SugarHouse to be more than an uninspired slot barn. 

In a way, the opposing community organizations were correct in their assumptions that Bridgeman's View wasn't concerned with their neighborhoods. It wasn't designed to complement Northern Liberties, but to liberate it from itself. Developers may have underestimated our community organization's relentless reaction to change. In an area arguably even assigned to any neighborhood, developers were forced to rationalize a skyscraper that rationally didn't belong.

In a city full of artists and creativity, we limit the right to be a visionary to those who can't afford it. While many in the surrounding communities might like to claim defeat over Bridgeman's View, the economy was its most vocal opposition. Had the contingent development surrounding the tower been afforded the ability to play out, Bridgeman's View might be pointing its middle finger at the neighbors that tried to squash it.