[hammersklavier]

I am of two minds about this render.

As a massing diagram, it is excellent! This is an elegant solution to the massing challenge of integrating a high-rise structure into a low-rise commercial district. I would actually be fine with more buildings of this type on Jeweler's Row so long as they followed this type of massing plan and kept the low-rise commercial district streetscape intact.

As a rendering, this really isn't that good. Ironically, the streetscape -- the part they want to demolish -- is by far the best-designed part of the building. This is more than a little silly, unless Toll Brothers is trying to preemptively curtail neighborhood groups' power over the design -- ramming it through approvals and offering us a turd.

My take: This thing clearly suffers from massively misplaced priorities. The podium is absurdly overdesigned for a structure that would have about the same height as the tallest structure they're planning on demolishing; the tower is likewise underdesigned and shockingly schizoid, betraying a lack of -- even a lack of caring about -- architectural cohesion. This building could actually fit better into the context of Jeweler's Row than most of us had feared, but it needs quite a bit of work to get there.

I would:

1. Design the podium around a façadectomy rather than a total demolition. There is clearly no reason for a complete demolition other than to save a few shekels for a developer known to be rolling in the dough. Stripping the 20th century interventions off 702-4 Sansom's ground floors and extending the 4th floor as a minimalist, highly contrastive curtain wall would be more than adequate to accentuate the rather handsome block of late 19th century and early 20th century commercial architecture.

ETA: The more I'm looking at that faux-1920s podium, the more insulting I think it is.

2. This is a building, not 2towers1core! Design with cohesion in mind. Make both sides of the building speak to each other. 700 Sansom is clearly not going anywhere, and given that it's the oldest true rowhome in the city, should not ever go anywhere. Put windows on that side. Eastward views, especially over the Curtis Center, should be particularly valuable. I don't particularly expect The Bridge 2.0 from a notoriously conservative designer, but compared to this abomination 10 Fucking Rittenhouse is a masterclass in historicist design.

So in sum: the architects figured out how to best mass this building, but for everything else, they really need to start from scratch.