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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I used to be a rolling stone you know, if a cause was right
Two things can be true at the same time. In this case, talking specifically about Greenbuild, it can be true that it is both pretty wonderful and also true that it’s just downright exhausting. If you don’t know what Greenbuild is, I’ll oversimplify a description by just calling it a sustainability conference I try to attend every other year. Like all conferences it has keynotes and seminars that start early and last all day, and even though those seminars are consistently worthwhile, the non stop rhythm starts to get to you after a few days. Looking at the pictures below, you can see that all that consistently worthwhile content is clearly not enough to capture the attention of that dog just a few rows in front of me. Maybe if the people who put together the Redefining Equitable Collaborations seminar included a few squirrels or squeaky toys in their presentation, it would have been a bit more equitable for all in the audience.
Greenbuild is more than consistently worthwhile exhausting seminars and bored dogs, it also includes tours and if you know me, you know I’m all about that. The first tour that we’ll talk about is called Sustainability at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which was a pretty accurate title for a seven hour long tour that really went into depth about sustainability at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Highlights (for me at least) of that seven hour Sustainability at the Philadelphia Navy Yard tour start with Bjarke Ingels’ 1200 Intrepid, a rectangular box building with the bottom front line curved. You can see this in the picture of the scale model above, or in the pictures of the full size building below. During the tour we learned that Bjarke wanted his building to embrace the adjacent park, and that every precast panel and window on that facade was a different shape.
The exterior with all those different precast panels and windows is highly impressive, but there’s also a surprise when you go inside. In the middle of the lobby there is an enclosed atrium that leads to a skylight, or, to be far more accurate, a periscope. If you look carefully at the photos (which like just about all of the photos you can click to enlarge), you can see the image of a US Navy ship in the navy yard part of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, a great idea and one that I hope the people who work in the building appreciate.
The Sustainability at the Philadelphia Navy Yard tour was fantastic, but the actual Philadelphia Navy Yard is a real work in progress. Like its counterpart in Brooklyn, it’s isolated, far from mass transit and it is very car-centric- I guess they expected sailors to drive and park everywhere when it was originally designed. Unlike its counterpart in Brooklyn, the Philadelphia Navy Yard is trying to change that by introducing residential units, a hotel and more public spaces, although its general feeling of quiet isolation will probably always be there unless (or more optimistically until) they finally extend the Broad Street subway line. Until then you’re still walled off from the city by I-95 and you’re not going to realistically go there unless you plan to drive and have an actual reason to drive all the way down there.
One actual reason might be to enjoy the public spaces like League Island Park where there’s a hard to miss piece of public art. Alpha Sacred Beings (The Origin of Creation) by Marianela Fuentes is a tricked out dinosaur who looks like he just came from a Dia de los Muertos event, and may be actual reason enough alone to consider getting in your car to visit the Navy Yard.
We’re still on the Sustainability at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (it was a seven hour long tour after all), but we’re finally finishing up at Shop 543 and the Urban Outfitters’ corporate campus. Shop 543 was exceptionally well designed, a great place for our lunch break and part of an almost urban area, which I think may be exactly how urban the fine people at Urban Outfitters are probably looking for anyway.
We go from almost urban to actual urban here at The Rail Park, a small section of converted elevated rail only a few blocks from the convention center in Center City Philadelphia. The daily grind at Greenbuild sometimes allows for short midday breaks between all of that consistently worthwhile content they offer all day long. This would allow for me to get to places like The Rail Park or to Independence Mall or across the street to Reading Terminal Market to buy a damn tasty Philadelphia cheesesteak shoved inside soft pretzel by those pretzel geniuses at Miller’s Twist.
I was in Philadelphia for seven nights and seven days, but this time I stayed out in Voorhees, New Jersey for a few reasons- with the biggest reason being that I just couldn’t justify spending an extra $1,500 just to stay in a just ok hotel in Center City all week. Instead I commuted in to Center City using PATCO, a fast, reliable train system that makes my (more) local, kind of similar PATH system look terrible by comparison. From my hotel in Voorhees, I drove every morning to the local Wawa for an iced coffee and soft pretzel breakfast, then boarded a PATCO train at Ashland to 8th and Market Streets, then walked the underground mall concourse to the convention center, then through Reading Terminal Market, then across the street to Panera for another iced coffee, then to the convention center and whatever seminar or keynote I needed to be at. It was an easy routine everyday and I looked forward to the PATCO ride, especially as we cruised past all that stopped traffic crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge.
On my way back home, the process reversed itself, except for the iced coffee part. But instead of walking through the underground mall to 8th and Market, I walked to PATCO’s terminal station at 15th and 16th and Locust Streets, where a train and a great seat was always waiting for me. This gave me a chance to walk on surface streets and right through the heart of the Philadelphia Center City street grid and that means cutting right through here and right through the center of Philadelphia City Hall.
I love Greenbuild tours, but unlike the AIA, there just aren’t all that many of them. My only other tour opportunity (or possibly tourportunity) was Reclaimed End Grain White Oak Flooring in the Tallest Building in Pennsylvania. Reading that, you know right away that the tallest building in Pennsylvania part drew me to it. The tour started in Norman Foster’s Comcast Technology Center’s lobby where we learned a lot about reclaimed end grain white oak flooring which, as things in Greenbuild tend to do, was more interesting than you might think.
As interesting as the reclaimed end grain white oak flooring part in the lobby was, it was nice when the tour decided to finish up at the top floor of the building, which is connected by a glass elevator that zips up the side facing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
The top floor is a hotel lobby, specifically the lobby of the Four Seasons Philadelphia, where a staircase between two fountains under a mirrored ceiling leads down to a Jean Georges restaurant. The space is technically public but they weren’t all that happy that we were there, even though we were taken there by someone from Norman Foster’s office. The view and the space though were worth the slightly uncomfortable feeling, although after a few minutes we were asked to leave because we were being disruptive. I guess if I was staying there (where the nightly rate was more than what I paid for an entire week at a nice hotel in Voorhees), I wouldn’t want to see people like me enjoying the lobby either.
So after 24 credits (all GBCI, all AIA-HSW, and many BD+C and/or WELL specific), we’re all done with Greenbuild and Philadelphia. Even though I was there for seven straight days, it still feels like I didn’t see as much as I hoped. Part of it was because Greenbuild was so exhausting, and part of it was that it got pretty cold those nights and suddenly standing outside in the Italian Market eating a cheesesteak in the dark just didn’t seem like that great of an idea anymore. But I’m not that far from Philadelphia and could go almost anytime I wanted, so there’s hope and reason to consider a return visit during warmer weather to get that damn cheesesteak and walk and see more neighborhoods of a city I’ve always liked.
And just like that it’s already time to walk back through City Hall on our way back to PATCO (or quite possibly the PATCO) for another easy ride over the bridge and back to New Jersey, with just a moment to spare looking down South Broad Street under an all too early Fall sunset. Goodnight South Broad Street, goodnight PATCO (or quite possibly the PATCO), goodnight Philadelphia.
