PHILADELPHIA | 709 Chestnut Street | 327 FT | 27 FLOORS

[summersm343]

Title: 709 Chestnut Street
Project: 300 luxury apartments
Architect: HLW International
Developer: Roseland & Parkway Corp.
Location: 709 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA
Neighborhood: Washington Square West
District: Center City
Floors: 27
Height: 327 FT

Roseland has teamed up with Parkway Corp. of Philadelphia to build the structure. Preliminary plans have the project with 300 high-end apartments along with 11,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenity space. The development will also include a 125-vehicle automatic parking garage.

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelp...ilding-in.html

[Palms]

Im back and forth between what is more inspiring and pleasing to the eye. This tower or my basement wall. The wall wins. Ugh.

[Zapatan]

ugly, who designs a building like this honestly?

[Londonee]

Originally Posted by Zapatan

ugly, who designs a building like this honestly?

It's another Philly Special.

These architects outta be laughed out of the room when they present this shit but.......they won't be.

[UrbanRevival]

Wow. Tell us how you really feel, everyone.

Much like most buildings that are built around the world, this rendering is just fine. It has a standard, modern aesthetic that isn't necessarily innovative, but it is definitely solid urban infill like 95% of other buildings that are going up everywhere else.

The constant expectation that every design has to be ground-breaking architecture is, frankly, extremely counter-productive and defies any sort of realism.

There are ugly buildings, but this definitely is not one of them.

[summersm343]

Man... a lot of hate for this one haha. It's a 32 story building replacing a surface parking lot. Be happy! Plus, this is very early preliminary renderings. It's possible the design could be improved.

Slightly pulled back rendering from Plan Philly



Article here:
http://planphilly.com/articles/2015/...h-and-chestnut

[allovertown]

Is there a reason why this isn't showing up in the Philadelphia Projects & Construction forum?

Also the negative criticism while perhaps eventually warranted at the very least seems presumptive at this point. I mean honestly this is clearly a very preliminary design, my 2nd grader has done more detailed drawings than this. At this point it looks at least visually interesting. As with most buildings its appeal will like come down to the quality of materials used.

[Philly Fan]

Inquirer article about this:

At 709 Chestnut, Mack-Cali, Zuritskys plan 32-story, 300-unit tower

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/i...-Chestnut.html

[shakman]

Haha. Some of you would make excellent building critics.

Due to its location, the visibility of this highrise should be quite prominent from the north, south and east.

[brenster]

Originally Posted by shakman

Haha. Some of you would make excellent building critics.

Due to its location, the visibility of this highrise should be quite prominent from the north, south and east.

I agree 800 walnut looks big by itself from the stadiums. This will be a great fill in for that part of town.

[patriotizzy]

It's this train of thought, "Don't be so critical, at least we're getting something!" that we don't get the nicer, more thought out building designs. I don't live in Philly, but here in SF we're getting our fair share of banal, boring boxes.

Just a thought.

I also dislike this building.

[miesian]

Originally Posted by patriotizzy

It's this train of thought, "Don't be so critical, at least we're getting something!" that we don't get the nicer, more thought out building designs. I don't live in Philly, but here in SF we're getting our fair share of banal, boring boxes.

Just a thought.

I also dislike this building.

This reminds me of the (cheap and ugly) high rise dorms at Penn from the 70s. What a mistake they were....

[mmikeyphilly]

It Reminds me so much of 3601 Market St. (I didn't care that much for 3601 Market when first proposed. But now that the façade is going up, it's turning out pretty decent.) Maybe this will look better if they use top notch materials on the façade. 709 Chestnut isn't awful, but it is far from award-winning. I do like it better than the Lit's proposal. This would look better in University City because of the height. But, it's perfect for blending in with the East Market, 500 Walnut, and the Lit's proposals. Those buildings aren't that tall either. It would be nice (some day) to build something with decent height, (remember Bridgeman's View Tower? ) Also, I'm just disappointed looking at squares.

[Philly Fan]

Originally Posted by mmikeyphilly

It Reminds me so much of 3601 Market St. (I didn't care that much for 3601 Market when first proposed. But now that the façade is going up, it's turning out pretty decent.) Maybe this will look better if they use top notch materials on the façade. 709 Chestnut isn't awful, but it is far from award-winning. I do like it better than the Lit's proposal. This would look better in University City because of the height. But, it's perfect for blending in with the East Market, 500 Walnut, and the Lit's proposals. Those buildings aren't that tall either. It would be nice (some day) to build something with decent height, (remember Bridgeman's View Tower? ) Also, I'm just disappointed looking at squares.

I agree. It's hard to judge what this will look like in real life until we can at least see some photorealistic renderings (which these are NOT--these are the initial cartoonish renderings that are typically seen relatively early in the process). And as you said, it's often not until the building is actually built that we can really judge it. Materials and details make all the difference when you're dealing with what is basically--like the vast majority of residential towers--a rectangular box.

[UrbanRevival]

Originally Posted by patriotizzy

It's this train of thought, "Don't be so critical, at least we're getting something!" that we don't get the nicer, more thought out building designs. I don't live in Philly, but here in SF we're getting our fair share of banal, boring boxes.

I understand the notion of trying to bolster architectural standards. I really do, and it's a noble cause.

But the constant, almost knee-jerk reaction to so many proposals as though it's the worst thing designed on the face of the planet is just not constructive. And, again, not every building has to be a work of art.

Not to get into a protracted debate, but I think there needs to be a balance of constructive criticism that recognizes development in context of achieving good urbanism and active streetlife. The aesthetic nitpicking that seems to dominate this forum does not do much to further that cause.

[SJPhillyBoy]

Philadelphia is like Skyscraper Heaven nowadays. The proposals and construction are non-stop. It is amazing (except for 1919 Market).

[Zapatan]

Originally Posted by SJPhillyBoy

Philadelphia is like Skyscraper Heaven nowadays. The proposals and construction are non-stop. It is amazing (except for 1919 Market).

Philly has a lot of great projects, I guess this one missed that train.

[allovertown]

Originally Posted by UrbanRevival

I understand the notion of trying to bolster architectural standards. I really do, and it's a noble cause.

But the constant, almost knee-jerk reaction to so many proposals as though it's the worst thing designed on the face of the planet is just not constructive. And, again, not every building has to be a work of art.

Not to get into a protracted debate, but I think there needs to be a balance of constructive criticism that recognizes development in context of achieving good urbanism and active streetlife. The aesthetic nitpicking that seems to dominate this forum does not do much to further that cause.

Exactly. I'd honestly prefer a building that literally looked like a pile of shit stacked 32 stories high that met the street well and had a vibrant ground level use as opposed to a building that looked like a work of art for stories 2-32 but had entrance to underground parking on street level. That type of stuff is simply more important to me and this rendering doesn't even make it clear what the first floor will even look like, so as I said, at this point it's really hard to have any type of meaningful discussion about the merits of the architectural design of this building.

That's not to say that there isn't room for criticizing the aesthetics of a building, you just have to do so in context. This reminds me of the complaints of the new chinatown gateway tower. Sure that building doesn't look great, but it faces a highway barricade and is surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. What could you realistically expect there? Situations like that you take what you can get. Same thing here, this is a narrow lot that never in a million years did I think we'd get a building of this magnitude here.

That's why it's a lot more understandable to me when people complain about how ugly and cheap 1919 Market is. That's a prominent lot where the sky was the limit. I don't blame people for expecting the best there and that building fails to even come close to meeting expectations aesthetically or in size. This lot is not 1919 Market. Not even close. So even if this building doesn't look great, it's still going to bring a lot of people and vibrancy to a location no one would have even guessed something like this was happening. It's not about not wanting to strive for the best, it's just about being a realist.

So I'll hope this turns out nice and be happy regardless, but if something like this gets proposed on the 1911 Walnut I'll grab pitchforks with the rest of you.

[Busy Bee]

Passé? Yes.

Ugly? Meh.

[hammersklavier]

Honestly, it looks no different than Land of Beige Precast in Chicago. Homely but whatever.

Interesting to note that several new apartment projects in the city are using aluminum paneling on their facades. 2020 Market, 1900 Arch, 3601 Market, 38Chestnut already. Our new beige precast? 3601 Market's facade was worth the wait.