25th & Delancey (Center City Philly)

tech_bonus · #1 Posted **Jan 30, 2011, 2:14 PM**

Greetings all, with a special shout-out to all the Philly SSP heads.

Yes, I'm more of a lurker here on SSP, though I lurk quite frequently. But I come here for the same reasons the majority of us do; our natural attraction to the urban form.

At one point I was considering contributing to that urban form. I wasn't sure what I was going to do right after highschool, so after an abbreviated go of Lincoln Technical Institute's Drafting program, I decided on the Community College of Philadelphia's Architecture curriculum. It was pretty apparent that CCP would be the better start down the path to becoming an Architect - by the second semester I was already tasked with designing a residence.

The images below are an almost faithful rendition of an original structure I came up with for the Final of CCP's Design Studio 101 class (I beleive it was called Design Studio) done in SketchUp.

It was Spring of '94 and with 2.5 weeks left in the semester we received our Final: an original rowhome design to be built at the (then) empty plot of land located at 25th and Delancey streets in downtown Philadelphia. FULL presentation drawings, FULLY rendered...and I think he wanted a CAD elevation! All to be presented by the designer to the rest of the class and Architecture faculty at the end of the semester...I didn't even have enough time to run to the bathroom and vomit. Forget how much time I knew I was going to bent over that damn drawing-board, I had to come up with something original!

So I wound-up with this 4-story 2 family flat configuration.

Very quickly, fast forward to the summer of 09 (oh and uhh...I never became an Architect btw) I was out of work and had, well, a lot of free time. I discovered Google SU and after checking out a really good tutorial ('Go-To-Skool') I decided to revisit this old project.

I've yet to texture it or anything for one main reason: this particualr model is either really pushing SU or I may need more RAM, because at this point, I can barely rotate the thing without the most painstaking of lag. That's the reason why I never got to the interior.

Here's what was eventually built at the site. I must say, I like them and they're more than likely of sounder design than my own...for mine was pretty flawed, I must admit.

25th & Delancey today

So, I just wanted to finally share what I had with everyone here at SSP.

And once again, this was never an actual project or proposal.

Flamesrule · #2 Posted **Jan 30, 2011, 9:09 PM**

I like it! very Philly-ish.

Have you tried purging your model? It gets rid of any un-needed lines, or faces.

tech_bonus · #3 Posted **Jan 31, 2011, 12:17 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flamesrule

I like it! very Philly-ish.

Have you tried purging your model? It gets rid of any un-needed lines, or faces.

Thanks Flames!

Oh yeah, I tried purging soon after I noticed it lagging more and more.

Flamesrule · #4 Posted **Jan 31, 2011, 9:30 PM**

Did you try hiding the components on the ones you were not using?

tech_bonus · #5 Posted **Feb 1, 2011, 2:07 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flamesrule

Did you try hiding the components on the ones you were not using?

Ahhh, good call! Now that you mention it. I don't have a lot of debris lying around in the file, nevertheless, I forget SU is still trying to calculate it all.

Thanks again for the advice Flames.

STR · #6 Posted **Feb 2, 2011, 3:25 AM**

What's the face/polycount on this thing? Just a ballpark, it looks like 5,000-20,000, but I have no idea how complicated the interior is.

volguus zildrohar · #7 Posted **Feb 2, 2011, 5:18 AM**

As far as the design goes, it's a nice riff on some of the "neo-colonial" or "Airlite revivial" type of houses you'll find around there, although four stories is a bit out of scale for that part of Center City. Nice work and design overall, though.