I remember a few people on PB criticizing this building, so this discussion should be interesting. Personally, I kind of like it in general, although I'm kind of undecided about the way it overhang's the sidewalk. Sort of robs it of a facade for people walking past on that side of the street.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15634179.htm

__________________
Welcome to Philadelphia. Here's how you can help us make our great city even better:

• Write to your state and local elected officials
• Report suspicious activity to the police department

I like it and I hate it.

I like the color, the materials.

Not crazy about the huge vertical blank walls that are in-between the glass.

I HATE the overhang. HATE it.

You only get the affect Inga describes if you are right across the street from it. If you are up on Walnut - how this building will be view by most people - it just doesn't look right.

For some reason, the brick facade just looks ridiculous to me. When I first saw it go on, my first reaction was to wonder if this Skirkanich guy made his money as the owner of "Garden State Brickface and Stucco" and forced them to use the ugly stuff!

Also made me wonder about Pender Labs, the building they tore down to make room for Skirkanich Hall. When you donate money for a building in your name (or in honor of someone), how long can you expect them to leave it standing? Pender Labs lasted less than 50 years!

It's the Igna rule...uglier = better.

It sucks. It fails at it's job as a wet lab.

It's extremely confusing on the inside.

The windows aparently don't have a way to block sunlight effectively for the wet experiments and..

on of the architectural "features" is to bath the inside "facade" with flourescent lights..

another no no for a genetics lab.

People in the labs have already begun to sabotage the lights.

and the overhang "conference room"... it's so bright (windows on 3/4 walls) they might as well remove the projector they mounted in the ceiling.

I know it's function is to connect 2 buildings at different levels and to add elevators for Towne and mechanical for the complex..

but go wander in close your eyes and spin 180 and see if you know which way your facing.

That awesome concrete? The steps are already chipping.

cool?

sure.

Useful?

figures Inga would "love it"

__________________
"

Can I add that I like the Bossone Building at Drexel better?

This poorly designed building is completely out of scale with the buildings around it. It's horrible and ugly in every respect. Truly an embarassment to the visual landscape.

__________________

11/28-12/31: MACY'S LIGHT SHOW (10AM-8PM EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR) AND DICKENS VILLAGE (10AM-7PM)
BEST VIEWING TIMES AFTER 4PM

Here's the rest of the article..

"
While Williams and Tsien may flout certain local traditions, such as Philadelphia's uniform street wall, the New York architects are ideological opposites of the celebrity types who blitz into town and then drop some arbitrary sculpture into the street grid. Their buildings embrace the local idiosyncrasies, even while they have their own identity.
At Penn, their assignment went beyond building quality labs. They were asked to unite two adjacent School of Engineering structures, Towne and Moore, both low, red-brick, early-20th-century buildings on 33d Street.
The obvious strategy would have been to design another red-brick building of the same height. But Williams and Tsien, assisted by project architect Philip Ryan, took the more daring, Venturi-esque path of seeking harmony through contradiction. They created a $42 million tower that rises higher than either neighbor, and thrusts its facade assertively beyond the plane of the two facades. To accentuate the differences, they then chose a green brick for the exterior.
Skirkanich is everything its two companions are not, and yet it magically pulls the ensemble together. The prominent overhang serves as a clearly marked entrance to the School of Engineering's sector of Penn's campus, a high-profile portal that functions like a castle tower and gates. The architects even created a metaphorical drawbridge by running the same black granite sidewalk paving under the overhang and into the lobby. It's significant that Skirkanich's castle tower is no ivory tower. It faces east toward Center City, rather than the interior of Penn's campus, providing students with a lookout on the greater world.
Before we peek inside, a few words need to be said about the green bricks. Some Penn officials feared they were a radical choice that would ruin the effort to brand the university as an oasis of tradition, but the school's dean, Eduardo O. Glandt, insisted that a building devoted to bioengineering had to look modern. Because the field is freighted with difficult moral issues, Williams and Tsien understood Skirkanich had to present its modernism with a human face.
So, while the bricks are a synthetic, Prada-esque green, they're also handmade. Ordinary red clay was pressed into molds that left the bricks puckered and rough. After that, they were coated with a manganese glaze. To ensure the custom product would stand up to time, the architects had them tested twice. Then the bricks were laid by hand, one by one. Compare that process with the Kimmel Center's, where factory sections of prelaid brick were wallpapered onto the exterior.
At the same time, the architects didn't want Skirkanich to look, in Tsien's words, "like it was crocheted," so they offset the brick with slick plates of glass that appear as if they are about to slide from the surface. The contrast of the two materials gives the facade a split personality that reminds us that modern life and modern buildings are layered with contradictory choices.
And yet the personal touch of the architects is still evident throughout Skirkanich. Like their Folk Art Museum, the building fits together like an intricate box puzzle. Williams and Tsien arranged its atriums and staircases so every trip through its halls is an adventure guaranteed to reveal unexpected interior juxtapositions or perfectly framed views of the city.
The architects intentionally devoted as much effort to the landings and corner nooks as they did to the labs. Today, university engineering and medical schools live and die by their ability to attract top-tier faculty. They demand not only great labs, but random social spaces where chance meetings can occur and creative exchanges can germinate. Skirkanich will be good bait.
As part of their effort to knit together Penn's engineering buildings, they've even included a "secret garden" of bamboo and concrete behind Skirkanich, which will be open to the public. The garden is the sun around which the buildings now orbit.
Skirkanich's only weak spot is the lobby. The building doesn't quite get going until you've embarked on the journey up its staircases.
Every designer of a Penn science building has to be mindful of Louis Kahn's Richards Medical lab, a landmark in architectural history that is considered an impossible place to conduct research. But before Skirkanich even opened, Glandt was able to lure a top researcher from Johns Hopkins University, along with his entire lab staff. This time, it looks as if Penn may get an architectural landmark that satisfies both the spirit and the mind."




yeah.. bad lobby for a "gateway" building..


and although the lab layout is correct it seems they failed to ask people who do the work in the labs about something simple like..


will the lights affect your work..

__________________
"

1962: http://imagesvr.library.upenn.edu/cg...&c=pennarchive

__________________

11/28-12/31: MACY'S LIGHT SHOW (10AM-8PM EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR) AND DICKENS VILLAGE (10AM-7PM)
BEST VIEWING TIMES AFTER 4PM

Pender was just as ugly...in a more cinderblock 60's kind of way.

Basically a square with rooms coming off it and a hollow square "ceiling"

It wasn't missed by it's users.

As for renaming stuff..

Penn does it on the regular.

http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/ho...f-1f96b4b47b60

__________________
"

...And why do we care if you think it's ugly? Maybe what you consider ugly is considered nice-looking by some others? Maybe people think you are ugly and that's why you have no friends and thus tons of time to spend on PhillyBlog?