Penn's Landing Pavilion

Once a series of mercantile piers and industrial uses cut off from the city by Interstate 95, Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront has been the subject of numerous planning studies over five decades. The new Park at Penn’s Landing will reconnect Philadelphia to its river’s edge by constructing a transformational civic space at the heart of the city’s waterfront. The I-95 Central Access Philadelphia (CAP) project will guide pedestrians from city sidewalks to an 11.5-acre park with a series of public amenities and attractions. In 2011, the architect contributed to the award-winning Master Plan for the Central Delaware. The new Park at Penn’s Landing is one of several initiatives developed from this plan, which proposed a public realm composed of parks, trails, and roads, transforming the formerly industrial waterfront into a landscape of twenty-first century urban development. Designed in collaboration with the landscape architect, the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (DRWC), and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), the new Park at Penn’s Landing broke ground in September 2023. The architect’s scope of work includes the architectural design of the central pavilion, a mass timber structure that will house and support park amenities, including a café, skate rentals and support for the adjacent ice rink/summer plaza, and office space for the DRWC park operations team. An open breezeway connects the two interior spaces, offering an iconic meeting place and threshold between park activities. The pavilion will provide a welcoming gateway to the waterfront and an iconic destination within the park. In addition to the fixed programs within the pavilion, the design will accommodate flexible special events and functions of varied scales and activity. The café will serve as both a public-facing amenity and a landmark connection to the park and waterfront. The DRWC’s ambitious sustainability goals have enabled us to pursue a high-performance building design with a target goal of net zero energy consumption and zero carbon. To support these sustainability goals, the project is targeting both LEED Platinum certification and Zero Carbon Certification through the International Living Future Institute. It is projected to be Philadelphia’s first mass timber and zero carbon structure for public use.