[ad_1]
Interface Studio Architects, also known as ISA, is a Philadelphia-based research and design office led by founding principal and creative director Brian Phillips, as well as principals Deb Katz and Alex Gauzza. The practice, whose studio is based in Kensington’s Crane Arts building, has earned a reputation for providing what today’s planners call the “missing middle,” a genre that has recently re-emerged as a tentative panacea for the nation’s housing crisis.
The “missing middle” typically refers to buildings containing three to seven households within a mid-rise envelope located in a dense urban environment. The size of their jobs usually ranges between townhouses and 5 to 1s. A modest brownstone in Brooklyn, a three-story building in Boston, or a “Bayonne Box” in Chicago all fit the bill.
“We care about being good citizens and supporting our hometown of Philadelphia as much as we care about being good architects,” Phillips said. one. “We often find ourselves sitting with clients very early on, helping to develop project briefs before land acquisition,” adds Goza. “At the outset of a new project, we start working with developers and contractors to consider cost, constructability and marketability as a means of shaping the building, not just for the owner’s bottom line but for the wider community. Serve.”
Philadelphia is an excellent testing ground for ISA. At Penn’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Phillips taught a series of workshops that dealt with timely housing issues. The ISA also has a research “Labs” section on its new website, which Katz describes as “a way of exposing a side of practice that has historically been difficult to see but has always been part of the way we work.” Some of the work includes exploratory projects such as repurposing concrete traffic barriers into positive streetscape elements. “ISA has operated from an architectural and research perspective from the beginning, with ideas generated from our grant-funded programs feeding back into our architectural work and vice versa,” Katz said.
XS Home 2019
The Vine Street Expressway is a sunken thoroughfare built near Philadelphia’s Chinatown during the urban renewal period. Located above the highway, XS House is an ISA project completed in 2019. Previously, the site had been used as an informal surface parking lot, barely large enough for two cars. ISA succeeded in building seven apartments on an 11-foot-wide site, with the building rising 63 feet above the ground. Units at XS House feel large due to creative use of vertical space, as they deploy bays, mezzanines and double-height ceilings. City zoning code overrides allowed XS House’s facade protrusions to cantilever 3 feet above the sidewalk, adding 30 percent more floor space to several apartments. Units at XS House come with storage space, breakfast bars, double-height living rooms, loft bedrooms and large operable windows.
signal room 2023
Just one block from Girard Station in Fishtown, Signal House is a new, renovated, six-story apartment building consisting of three split-level rentals. The building is clad in an industrial black exterior and rises nearly 70 feet above the sidewalk. Part of the novelty of the Signal House lies in its section: it is an infill building without an elevator and with only one staircase, creating spacious apartments with unique interior arrangements on a very narrow plot. There, ISA successfully placed spacious apartments on land designated for single-family townhouses. To maximize user comfort, ISA designed an interlocking system with mezzanines in each unit. The architects said this allowed for generous floor-to-ceiling heights and rooms filled with natural light.
Midtown Midrise 2023
Detroit’s Willis-Selden Local Historic District is a modest residential neighborhood built in the Midwest during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). There are a variety of housing types with lush front yards, from handsome single-family homes to compact pre-war apartments. ISA recently completed Midtown Midrise, a 37,000-square-foot, 4-story mixed-use building at 655 Willis Street in the historic district. In total, ISA provides 35 apartments, a ground-floor café and lobby, and on-site parking. The design pays homage to Detroit’s proud metal fabrication heritage by wrapping Midtown’s mid-rises in textured metal cladding. The façade folds and, at certain intervals, undulates to provide residents and unique outdoor balconies with excellent views that orthogonal facades cannot provide.
In progress at the same time
Philadelphia’s commercial real estate industry has taken a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown has closed ground-level commercial storefronts across the city, while local business owners struggle to stay afloat. To help reverse these trends, the nonprofit Meantime began as an ISA and grew into a coalition among real estate industry leaders, municipalities, landowners and community stakeholders. The nonprofit’s goal is to activate underutilized storefronts in neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia by connecting local entrepreneurs with the space. To date, Meantime has supported pop-up restaurants, flea markets, and other spontaneous events in and around Philadelphia vacant lots. The program is supported by Sachs Arts Innovation and the D3 Real Estate Development Programme.
[ad_2]
Source link