Type:
community center
LOCATION:
philadelphia, pa
STATUS:
Comeptition
DATE:
2021
Awards & press:
hok design futures (1st place)
Featured in Pressing Matters
COLLABORATORS:
oowoo team: danny ortega, nicholas houser
Nested Neighbors reimagines an existing structure along Lancaster Avenue as a hybrid civic and cultural hub. By retaining and replicating the original façade, the intervention preserves a sense of familiarity while concealing two striking monolithic volumes within. These volumes house a maternal health clinic and a café, suspended above a covered neighborhood food market. The layering of old and new generates a tension between continuity and transformation, ensuring the project is both rooted and forward looking.
The design is organized around light, community, and adaptability. A series of skylights perforates the monoliths, drawing daylight deep into every level and reducing reliance on artificial illumination. This diffused natural light softens the atmosphere of the clinic, countering the sterility often associated with healthcare spaces and creating a more welcoming environment. Below, the market is energized by a system of mobile façade fragments referred to as “Cracks and Tracks,” which slide outward to form a grotto like plaza. These shifting elements announce the life of the market, while follies along the same tracks serve as vendor stalls or sculptural objects when inactive.
This project is conceived as an intervention that amplifies rather than erases. By occupying the footprint of its predecessor and layering new programs within a recognizable envelope, the design avoids the alienation often tied to urban renewal. It creates a framework for exchange, care, and visibility, transforming the site into a nexus for neighborhood identity and growth.
PROCESS
This project emerged from a study of contrast and synergy, asking how to nest new programs within an inherited fabric without displacing its character. Early explorations tested ways to preserve the façade as a cultural anchor while carving space for new forms. The solution was to replicate and extend the envelope, establishing a familiar boundary that frames moments of rupture when sections shift aside. Within, the monoliths evolved as sculptural containers that could simultaneously assert presence and absorb community programs. The design progressed as a series of negotiations between permanence and ephemerality, with the façade serving as a veil that reveals activity only when engagement is desired.
movement
Circulation in this project is both pragmatic and ceremonial. At the ground plane, entrances align with the primary cores and exceptional stairs, guiding visitors seamlessly into the monoliths. A sub grade level accommodates staff parking and emergency drop off, ensuring uninterrupted access for critical operations. Vertical movement is dramatized through the exceptional stair, which spirals through a skylit void to the maternal clinic, offering an experience of ascent that balances utility with architectural expression. Between the two monoliths, suspended walkways and catwalks act as connectors, framing views and orchestrating encounters as visitors transition between programs. This network of passages and thresholds creates a spatial rhythm that reinforces the dual identity as a place of both service and civic gathering.
