HOK “Design Futures” Competition | [Spring2020]

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Partner: Eric Anderson

Awards: 2nd Place, Published by suckerPUNCH Daily

Philadelphia’s downtown green-spaces and parks (Rittenhouse Square, Washington Square, Independence Park) are compartmentalized within the urban fabric; they sit as discrete squares, distinct from the buildings which surround them. By forgoing a conventional podium, the Thoroughfare Towers minimize the building footprint and establish a series of integrated, multi-level public green-spaces and parks along one of Philadelphia’s most popular streets.

Program is scattered throughout the entirety of the project, providing public plazas and zones on multiple levels of the towers in addition to the leasable office space and residential units. Horizontal connectors bring the two towers together for public activities, creating tiers of plazas rather than Philadelphia’s traditional one single plaza on the ground floor.

The vertical break between the two towers provides a thoroughfare leading to Philadelphia’s famous Market Street. The orthogonal nature of the thoroughfare also informed the overall formal geometries of the tower design. Between these towers a portal emerges through which one can view the city anew.