Remixing Architecture, Without Breaking the Rules

Architecture critic Inga Saffron takes a look at what she thinks is "the most innovative take on the traditional rowhouse that Philadelphia has seen in years." Saffron remarks on how the building obeys the rules and innovates at the same time.

1 minute read

March 16, 2010, 9:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Saffron writes, "QB3's house comes to the sidewalk and embraces the world with ground-floor windows, as all good rowhouses should.

Those windows, however, cut through the house's core like a seismic fault, opening up dramatic views into, out of, and through the structure. The bold, three-sided opening confounds our expectation of how a Philadelphia rowhouse is supposed to engage the street: There's too much glass to condemn the house as a fortress, yet its swaths of brick are too extensive to think of it as a transparent building."

Images are included.

Monday, March 15, 2010 in The Philadelphia Inquirer

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