Society Hill Towers
Building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Student Innovation Center
Iowa State University is widely known for its diverse collection of academic programs and commitment to hands-on learning. To further strengthen its multidisciplinary culture of innovation, the University needed a high-quality, centralized space to support student work of all fields of study. The Student Innovation Center provides a flexible, dynamic space that encourages around-the-clock experimentation, collaboration, and free exchange of ideas. This student-centered building serves as both a gateway and a destination on campus. The Student Innovation Center captures the spirit of higher education by housing physical and intellectual resources from all of Iowa State’s undergraduate colleges into a single facility to enable and promote interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration. The concept of the Center is unique and had no precedent at the time of design. To create a building that truly supported the needs of students, the design team conducted an in-depth discovery process that included surveying the entire student body, hosting interdisciplinary and subject-area focus groups, and meeting with stakeholders. Clad in a high-performing glass facade that balances aesthetic goals with environmental and performance priorities, each elevation manages the effects of solar heat gain while maximizing views to and from the building. This pleated curtainwall distinguishes the building on campus while signaling the quality of exploration conducted inside. To accomplish its mission to be a space of collaborative learning, experimentation, and entrepreneurship for the entire university community, the building hosts a variety of fixed and flexible spaces for a variety of users, including prototyping labs, fabrication studios, and open classrooms. Despite the high energy demands of the Center’s various makerspaces—including a glassblowing studio with furnaces operating 24/7—the project has achieved LEED Gold certification. This is largely attributed to a dedicated outdoor air system, displacement ventilation, and high efficiency heat recovery. The result is a building that serves as both a gateway and destination on campus, attracting undergraduate innovators, creators, and collaborators across disciplines inside a building that anticipates their needs and supports creativity wherever it grows.
Pavilion at The University of Pennsylvania
The new Pavilion for the University of Pennsylvania Health System is a flexible inpatient facility that serves as a new institutional and architectural icon for Penn Medicine on its extensive campus in West Philadelphia. Co-located within the same complex with some of the world’s most advanced research laboratories and specialized imaging facilities, the design intent is to place the patient at the center and enable collaboration in research. The design of the building is sustainable, efficient, uplifting and sensitive to its surroundings, responding to the needs of people – material and spiritual, measurable and intangible. With this approach, the patient comes first. Their experience starts with a reassuring welcome in the lobby, and extends through comfortable wards and uplifting spaces, such as the soaring cafe and surrounding gardens. By prioritising light and views for the patients, visitors and staff, the design takes a holistic view towards the wellbeing of the people inside. The unique, flexible planning system for the units breaks the building down into ‘neighborhoods’ which signify a smaller, more human scale, providing a feeling of a more sensitive and personalised environment. Each floor features a family ‘living room’ for people accompanying the patient, and the size and configuration of the bed units is also flexible to be more reactive to changing needs and patient demands. Flexibility is also a key consideration; often the most unpleasant experiences for a patient are when they are constantly wheeled in and out of different rooms to accommodate the changing level of medical care they require. The 500 acuity adaptable private patient rooms have been designed to support varying types of patient care – from Intensive Care Units to basic in-patient facilities, and are spacious enough for family to stay with the patient. They also feature an interactive wall that allows the patient to customise their own environment, while also working as a real-time information and teaching aid for doctors. As medical science evolves, patient priorities will continue to change and new technologies will need to be incorporated – many of which we cannot yet predict. In this way the building provides a platform for the future delivery of medicine. Equally important is the way in which the new building will be integrated with its setting. Continuing Philadelphia’s wonderful civic tradition, the design creates a new public square, a focus for all of the surrounding buildings, which will anchor Penn Medicine and create new connections between the hospital and university campus. The form of the building is very much of its place and in keeping with the architecture of the campus – its curve references the Rotunda of the Penn Museum. Furthermore, a new, more defined route from the train station to this new public square will give arriving visitors an overview of the whole Penn Hospital campus, making orientation simple and intuitive. The new addition also draws a strand of greenery into the site to connect the river and city with a physic garden – a landscape that celebrates edible medicinal plants.
Jeff and Judy Henley Hall: Institute for Energy Efficiency
The Institute for Energy Efficiency at UC Santa Barbara was founded with a mission to develop breakthrough technologies that save energy while advancing the standard of living worldwide. It requires a headquarters as forward-thinking as its mission: one to serve as a home for dynamic collaboration that has extended beyond high-quality laboratory spaces. Henley Hall, a 49,900 sq. ft., LEED platinum-aspiring laboratory and education building, provides highly functional laboratories, offices, and collaborative space in a long-lived building. Henley Hall’s massing is bifurcated along programmatic lines to optimize comfort and operational cost impact and minimize energy use. This innovative approach to program organization allowed the designers to create something new: a research building that breathes. The split massing gathers sensitive and tightly controlled laboratory spaces in the west wing, while orienting offices, classrooms, and gathering spaces around a three-story, open-air eastern atrium filled with natural light. The east wing features an automated natural ventilation system tied to operable windows, dissolving the boundaries between outdoors and in. Henley Hall seeks to forge a strong connection to its stunning natural surroundings. The fritted glazing is optimized and oriented to minimize heat gain and filter daylight to climate-sensitive research spaces while maximizing views to the Santa Ynez mountains, while operable windows in offices and indoor-outdoor collaboration spaces provide comfortable moments for respite. In the landscape are outdoor workspaces shaded by a deep umbra and flowering trees. Stormwater is absorbed on site while the landscape uses recycled water and efficient systems for irrigation. Henley Hall’s design, which separates sensitive laboratory environments from classroom and gathering spaces to help achieve the ambitious energy goals envisioned by the client, have proved uniquely suited to socially distant working and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The building is physical and spiritual home for the vanguard of energy research that integrates energy-saving measures that minimize operational carbon without sacrificing comfort, quality or aesthetics.
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.
University of Pennsylvania
Private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Comcast Technology Center
Skyscraper located in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, United States.
Cira Centre
Office high-rise in the University City section of Philadelphia.
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Open in Atlas MapFrequently Asked Questions
How long does the Philadelphia architecture walking tour take?+
The self-guided walking tour covers approximately 7.7 km with 4 stops. Allow approximately 3 hours including 20 minutes of viewing time per building.
Is the Philadelphia architecture tour free?+
Yes, this is a completely free self-guided walking tour. You can view the route on the interactive map, export it to Google Maps for navigation, and explore at your own pace.
Do I need to book the Philadelphia architecture tour in advance?+
No booking is required — this is a self-guided tour that you can start at any time. All buildings can be viewed from the outside. For guided tours with expert commentary, we recommend checking GetYourGuide for local architecture tours.
What is the best time to do the Philadelphia architecture walking tour?+
Morning light (before 11am) is ideal for photography of building facades. Weekdays tend to be less crowded around commercial buildings. Allow a full morning or afternoon for the complete tour.