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Architects: ISA
- Area: 6500 ft²
- Year: 2016
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Photographs:Sam Oberter
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Manufacturers: Bailey Wood Products, Fiber Frame, Metal Sales Manufacturing Corp.
Text description provided by the architects. Powerhouse carefully fits a dense cluster of 31 units into Philadelphia’s Francisville neighborhood fabric, providing single family townhomes, duplexes, and two small apartment buildings that meet the needs and budgets of residents with a wide variety of living options at a range of prices.
Francisville is a rapidly gentrifying edge between an expanding Center City core and outlying Philadelphia neighborhoods. Development here has the opportunity to provide variety and diversity in keeping with the character of the community around it. The site strategy for Powerhouse allows infill to grow to blockfill, addressing neighborhood scale with added density and street life.
The cluster of buildings wraps an urban corner, navigating existing buildings on a sloping site by varying typologies and scales across the block. Three existing rowhouses were integrated into the streetwall, inspiring an in-and-out jog along the sidewalk that looks to camouflage the old and new into a single zone.
Powerhouse is deeply green as architecture and as an urban block. Stormwater is completely managed by way of green roofs and rain gardens along the curb line, taking in water from the street surface. The buildings themselves are super energy-efficient with all 31 units achieving LEED Platinum certification.
The stoop is a traditional Philadelphia condition that acts as a mediator between the public sidewalk and the private residence. This project expands on this idea with a “super stoop” – a sequence of generous entry platforms navigating grade changes, entry stairs, and basement windows, and featuring fabricated metal handrail panels designed by a local artist..
