Update: Construction photo added August 2019.

In North Philadelphia, near Temple University, the Philadelphia Housing Authority is building a complex made up of a community center, townhomes, and apartments. The entire project was governed by LEED (platinum as the objective, achieving gold), and other tough environmental standards. I was on this project from the ground up, taking the conceptual package from the client and transforming it into a feasible product.

I was personally responsible for coordination between a handful of consultants, and was a part of each level of the project – from sustainability meetings, to client design meetings, to back and forth talks with the principals of Blackney Hayes. My hands can be seen throughout the project in various ways, as I was in charge of renderings, schematic funding packages, and presentation boards. The design of the community center plaza, the white extruded masses and reveals, and the two story townhomes were right from my sketchbook.

The project taught me a lot about the limitations of public funding and bureaucracy in design. Many of our decisions and intentions could not make it past the first revision due to budget and scale of the project. Making due with what you have and creating excellent design and well-functioning architecture is a skill, and this project achieved that.

Programs: Revit, Photoshop, Sketchup, Illustrator, Vray

Images Courtesy of Blackney Hayes Architects