Despite high-rise condo projects featuring name-brand architects sprouting up all over Philadelphia, an innovative design for low-income housing steals the top prize from the city's AIA.
"Judges for the American Institute of Architects looked past the preening high-rise peacocks and last month awarded Philadelphia's top design prize to a modest cluster of townhouses for low-income families in North Philadelphia."
"Like the best of Philadelphia's new infill housing, the proposal offers a fresh take on the traditional rowhouse. Instead of rectangular boxes marching in single file, [Interface Studio] designer Brian Phillips laid out the 13 homes on Sheridan Street, between Berks and Montgomery, as an interlocking puzzle of L-shaped twins."
"The unconventional site plan is just a starting point, however. In a city where it is still considered innovative to dress up public housing with peaked gables and bay windows, Interface's design looks as if it were spawned in the hipster enclave of Northern Liberties. Windows blip asymmetrically across the screen of its facades like the random lights of a video game. There isn't a red brick in sight."
Read the full story: A public housing design outshines upscale rivals
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City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello