These Are The Region’s 8 Best Developments
The Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center, one of this year’s Rouse Award winners, is at once a stormwater management facility and a community recreational and cultural asset. | Photo by BKP, courtesy ULI Philadelphia
The Philadelphia region is brimming with talented architects and designers cranking out imaginative, creative and attractive buildings.
And they’re all putting them in University City.
Okay, not all of them. But three of this year’s eight winners of the Urban Land Institute Philadelphia’s third annual Willard G. “Bill” Rouse III Awards for Excellence are located in University City, more than any other single part of Eastern and Central Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Delaware, the region covered by ULI’s Philadelphia district council.
The winners were chosen from a group of 15 finalists by a panel of 15 architects, developers, property managers and other land-use professionals, all from outside the district council’s territory. Projects completed within the last five years are eligible for the award. The winners span a wide range of uses, with residential projects and public park spaces tied for the largest categories. They are, in alphabetical order:
Rendering by BLTa
3737 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. Architects/designers: BLT Architects, SPG3 and Hartman Design Group; developer: Radnor Property Group for land owner Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania
Photo by Halkin Mason Photography
Central Green at the Navy Yard, Philadelphia. Landscape architect: James Corner Field Operations; developers: Liberty Property Trust, Synterra Partners, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Photo from Community Legal Services Philadelphia
Community Legal Services, North Philadelphia Law Center, Philadelphia. Architect: Atkin Olshin Schade Architects; developer: Community Legal Services
Photo from Center City District
Dilworth Plaza (“Dilworth Park”), Philadelphia. Architects/designers: Urban Engineers and the OLIN Studio; developer: Center City District
evo Philly, Philadelphia. Architect: Erdy McHenry Architecture; developers: Brandywine Realty Trust, Campus Crest Communities and Harrison Street Real Estate Capital for land owner University of Pennsylvania. Cira Green, the rooftop public park in the foreground of the photo above, was a Rouse Award finalist
Hoover-Mason Trestle, Bethlehem. Architect: Wallace Roberts & Todd; developer, Redevelopment Authority of the City of Bethlehem. This is the second project at the SteelStacks Arts & Culture Campus to win a Rouse Award; the campus itself, an adaptive reuse of the former Bethlehem Steel mill, won it in 2014, the first year the awards were conferred
The Summit, Philadelphia. Architect: Solomon Cordwell Buenz; developer: American Campus Communities, which jointly owns the project with Drexel University
Photo by BKP, courtesy ULI Philadelphia
Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center, Philadelphia. Architect: BKP; landscape design and master planning: Andropogon; developer: Water Department and Department of Parks & Recreation, City of Philadelphia. The Venice Island project is at once a stormwater management facility and a community cultural and recreational asset with indoor and outdoor performance space.
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