It's not the destination, but the journey itself...

People will venture into the space no matter if there's a point of interest on the other side. I work in the Academy House, one block from the Kimmel and really not a nice place to see at all. But we have a small throughway from 15th to Locust which dozens of people make use of everyday. I think creating one in the Kimmel would certainly be used if not as a means to and end, then quite possibly as an end in and of itself. What's more, I agree that quite a few problems could be solved at once.... more (different) people, a break in the facade, more activity, making use of 15th street, and so on.

As for a previous comment that nothing would be done, I can tell you that the new owners are actively looking for solutions to the many problems. What's more, I know of at least one member of the team to whom I plan to send this thread...

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designphiladelphia.wordpress.com

New owners of what?

AFAIK, the Regional Performing Arts Center still owns the Kimmel Center and manages the Academy of Music, which IIRC is still owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

Or did you mean new board of directors?

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

We've had eight years of "decisive," "experienced" "leadership." Why not try intelligence this time around?

sorry, my bad. i meant directors.

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designphiladelphia.wordpress.com

i would also argue that the exterior is incredibly under lit. the front and side entrances are dark even when there is a performance or event, making it hard to gage whether the building is open and also adding to its sense of foreboding. the windows looking into the gift shop provide some sense of activity before and after performances, however, for the most part there is little visual pull on spruce street.

we must remember when analyzing the kimmel center that it is not on the same cultural level as liberty place and to place it on such detracts from the particular experience of going to the orchestra or any other performance. once the atrium becomes a pedestrian thru-way, the sense of "arrival" is minimized and the cloistered feel of the atrium is lost. one of the beautiful aspects of this space is the sense of hushed anticipation immediately prior to a performance as groups of people gather before entering into verizon hall or perelman theatre.

What a wretched idea. The Philadelphia Orchestra is doing fine. They found their market, they can stick with it. If the Walnut Street Theatre decided to start to doing very complex Sondheim or Ionesco shows to bring in a hipper, younger or diverse audience, we'd lose 56,000 subscribers.

Old people come into the city several times a year, drop at least $70 a person at restaurants nearby and give hundreds to thousands of dollars in donations to Arts and Culture organizations in Philadelphia. If they're in town for a matinee, they're making a whole day of it.

Their subscribers have $$$. What exactly are young, urban hipsters going to bring in? This is one of the premiere orchestras in the world, if people can't appreciate that then they shouldn't feel left out. Why dumb down something that's already perfect as is?

It's called Arts & Culture. Young people have bars, the TLA, coffeehouses, etc. I'm 28, I attend concerts at the Troc and I have tickets to the Kimmel this weekend (which I always thought was a beautiful building, but apparantly I was wrong).

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You can't stop the beat of HAIRSPRAY!

An all-new production of the Broadway smash hit only at the Walnut Street Theatre!

Nov. 4 - Jan. 4

click here for info and tickets!

"Does it look good?" and "Does it function well?" are two overlapping but distinct questions.

Louis Sullivan's famous dictum "Form follows function" was honored as much in the breach as in the observance back when he wrote the phrase ca. 1915 in his book The Tall Office Building Aesthetically Considered, and it still is today.

Some buildings that are visually quite handsome -- stunning, even -- do not function well, often because the architect was too focused (fixated, obsessed) on other things to notice that something he was recommending wouldn't work.

Exhibit A in this category is the Richards Medical Laboratories at the University of Pennsylvania, considered by most architecture critics one of Louis Kahn's masterpieces. The design is based on a rather sophisticated theory of Kahn's about "servant" and "served" spaces, but in the process of elaborating this, he overlooked a small detail: Biology experiments don't do well in radiant sunlight -- the heat generated by the sun's rays as they pass through windows cooks them. His served spaces would have made great faculty offices with their large windows, but they make lousy biology labs, and you will note a number of Richards' windows are covered with foil.

The Kimmel Center IMO is a very appealing building to look at, especially the glass-domed roof that recalls classic train sheds and encloses the two boxes inside it. But its exterior mass would probably have looked better clad in the limestone used for the National Constitution Center (which, if we're speaking about formulaic, is yet another Pei Cobb Freed exercise in triangulation) than it does in the brick Vinoly chose because, well, isn't brick what Philadelphia buildings are made of?

Most of the aesthetic criticism focuses on the vast expanses of brick on the building's exterior. I think most people who have been inside the place like how the interior looks and works. Most of the criticism in general focuses on how the building performs -- or fails to perform -- its intended functions. One of those functions was for the interior plaza between the two performance halls to serve as a public gathering place where people would want to meet and hang out when there's nothing else going on. If the public doesn't gather there, you can't say the space works, and the public doesn't gather there.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." --Gen. Colin Powell

We've had eight years of "decisive," "experienced" "leadership." Why not try intelligence this time around?

I think they should rip it down for a Farmer's Market and a BYOB and a coffee shop

So I can use it once a month and feel a fuzzy on the inside knowing it's there.


Right? Right?


Let's all go to the Academy of Music and eat lunch in the lobby!


I'm throwing a kegger in the Union League


Let's throw the frisbee around the Art Museum?


What?

But these are public buildings! I demand BYOB!



The Franklin Institute BBQ will begin Thurday at 5 PM. I'm hooking up the slip and slide to Ben's face..

It's a public area right?

**** it...

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I think Inga's being overly harsh. Sure the Kimmel could use some more street level retail. But what other performance center doesn't have the same issues? Lincoln Center in NYC?? Davies Hall in San Francisco??? The Kennedy Center in DC???? They're all forboding in some way. If Lincoln Center gets more traffic than the Kimmel, it's simply because more people live and work around Lincoln Center than the Kimmel. If anything, the primary reason not as many people use the Kimmel as Inga would like is because it is on the edge of the high density area of Center City. There's stuff to the North but, to the South there's the University of the Arts and Symphony House and then not much. To the East, directly across the street, there's an empty lot and a few underutilized buildings. If the Kimmel Center were, say, at 1700 Walnut Street, it would have tons of traffic. However, located where it is located, it has an uphill battle.

All that said, I think it is a fine building and a major asset. Also, I wonder why so much criticism is often launched at the Kimmel and yet people seem to think the Academy of Music is just fine. Acoustics aside, I think the Academy is awful - poorly maintained and *forbidding*. It is as if it has a huge "do not enter unless you pay for a ticket" sign on it. Back when the Symphony was at the Academy, I never went. Why? Because the Academy always gave the impression that you had to be serious about classical music to go. With the Kimmel, I would just saunter in undaunted and then, if I see people lining up for cheap tickets to an event I might find interesting, I'd line up with them.

Just because you can't walk into the Kimmel Center and have a social event does not mean it's a failure of form over function. The Kimmel Center has 2 major venues inside that are both asthetic and functional. Has anyone ever been in Verizon Hall? The dynamics were meticulously planned to give the best acoustics possible and drown out all outside noise. The organic, curving forms in Verizon Hall are meant to reflect the acoustics of a cello.

Sorry people don't approve of the exterior, but I'm sure there are people here who would have a problem with the Guggenheim museum if it was built on Broad Street.

__________________
You can't stop the beat of HAIRSPRAY!

An all-new production of the Broadway smash hit only at the Walnut Street Theatre!

Nov. 4 - Jan. 4

click here for info and tickets!

and yet there's an article in the paper approximately once a year about how the acoustics are disappointing the orchestra and the recording engineers and everyone, and how they're still tuning things.