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-   -   PHILADELPHIA | Penn Medicine New Patient Pavilion | 343 FT | 17 FLOORS (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=217675)

wally May 5, 2016 1:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaxean (Post 7430210)
You should get out more then: Bronx Community College (yes, the Bronx) with their extremely impressive (imo) BRAND NEW library. Heck, even Girard College in North Philly, a goddamn high school, has a more beautiful campus then Penn.



I just don't think this claim has any basis in reality. Penn's campus is grossly inferior compared to tons of other prominent American universities: UVA, Duke, UChicago, Yale, UMichigan, Berkley, Princeton, Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, William and Mary, Stanford, WashU, University of Washington, UCLA, Notre Dame, MIT, Rice, and I could go on and on and on. Frankly, I can hardly think of any prominent national university with a discernibly worse campus than Penn's, except maybe NYU given that they don't really have a campus at all.

Two or three weeks ago, a friend visited Penn on a college tour with her younger sibling. Penn was her first stop, and she said she thought it looked really nice. Then she went to other major East Coast colleges and said she was blown away by how amazing they looked and realized that Penn's campus was actually surprisingly underwhelming compared to the competition. Sure, Penn is nice compared to like suburbs or shopping malls. It's not that nice when compared to major historic universities.

And I know plenty of people who have said that Penn's campus is better/nicer than at least half of the supposedly superior institutions that you mentioned.

I attended Columbia and have visited Harvard and MIT and would say that I much prefer Penn's campus to all three. I think a lot of people have dreamy notions about what college campuses are supposed to look like (lots of bilateral symmetry and the prerequisite Collegiate Gothic or neo fill-in-the-blank style architecture) This stuff looks really nice in brochures and can be seductive when you're passing through on a tour and imagining yourself as a bright young scholar on your way to class in dark-wood paneled classrooms. The reality (for me at least) is that when you live with it on a daily basis, it becomes just plain boring and monotonous.

This point was driven home to me recently by a visit to UNC Charlotte's campus. I think that many on this forum would not be too impressed by it. It does, however, have most of the ingredients that you can find at some of the more prestigious colleges that you mentioned. Bilateral symmetry out the wazoo? Check. A lot of brick and stone? Check. Courtyards everywhere? Check. What it doesn't have is the highly intricate ornamentation and patina of age. Yes, it's trying really hard to be like the older campuses, and in the process, it's revealing that this "collegiate" look is kinda shallow. It's nice because it's old and has a lot of ornamentation. It's a one trick pony.

Penn is different. It's not constrained by the same ideas/ideals. It feels a lot more like it's part of the city--it interacts with the grid. Does it have some nice, pretty buildings? Sure, but it doesn't beat you over the head with them. That Penn still feels like a campus without this pre-planned hullabaloo, is a testament to its character and quality, in my opinion.

In short, you're wrong.

Frontst17 May 5, 2016 2:10 AM

Brutalism isn't everyone's cup of tea understandably but it's not to be written off. I attended Arcadia which is a "cute" campus, very small but nice. Our most awarded building was a hulking brutalist mass but continues to receive rave reviews decades later... And we have a damn Castle on campus

Urbanthusiat May 5, 2016 3:10 AM

Penn certainly has many unique locales on campus with a distinct "sense of place." Locust Walk, the Quad, Franklin Field and The Palestra, Highrise field, Biege Block and fraternity houses, Penn Park, HUP and CHOP complex, etc. are all very different spaces, and the campus in its entirely doesn't really have a unifying theme. I think this makes it more urban and authentic actually. It amazes me how well Penn is integrated into the city fabric. And I'll admit that some buildings certainly leave something to be desired, I think overall the architecture of Penn is actually very interesting and generally well-designed. Even the Brutalism on campus isn't so bad, like Van Pelt library, which I actually like a lot. The modern "high rises in fields" fad ala "The Highrises" at Penn I find pretty interesting actually. A college campus is really the only place where this kind of scheme works well. Penn has one of the best urban campuses in the country, no question, everyone I've ever spoken to loves it.

ajaxean May 6, 2016 1:54 AM


Cro Burnham May 6, 2016 2:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaxean (Post 7432927)
It's truly a wonderful complement to its equally lovely, well-planned neighbor, the Perelman Center. What a beautiful campus indeed! Certainly one of the most lovely urban campuses in the world!

You need to be a bit more nuanced: a university campus and a medical denter campus are two entirely things . . . . obviously. I agree the HUP campus is dismal, and it probably needn't have been had the planners decades ago had more foresight. But that barely distinguishes it from just about every other medical campus out there. They are all pretty awful. Hospitals are pretty awful in general, as architecture. Everywhere in the US, not just at Penn or in Philadelphia.

Happy to be proven wrong, if you can show us all the beautiful medical campuses elsewhere in America. Do they really exist?

Philly Fan May 6, 2016 2:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cro Burnham (Post 7433283)
You need to be a bit more nuanced: a university campus and a medical denter campus are two entirely things . . . . obviously. I agree the HUP campus is dismal, and it probably needn't have been had the planners decades ago had more foresight. But that barely distinguishes it from just about every other medical campus out there. They are all pretty awful. Hospitals are pretty awful in general, as architecture. Everywhere in the US, not just at Penn or in Philadelphia.

Happy to be proven wrong, if you can show us all the beautiful medical campuses elsewhere in America. Do they really exist?

:yeahthat:

Glad you posted this. I was actually thinking of posting something similar, with photos of some of Penn Medicine's peers at the top of national rankings of major academic medical centers, e.g., Mass General in Boston, Columbia Presbyterian in NYC, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Duke in Durham, Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Texas Medical Center in Houston, UC San Francisco, UCLA, etc. Do a Google image search of these and you'll quickly get the idea. These places all developed in a hodgepodge, organic fashion over time to support the amazing things that go on INSIDE the buildings, with relatively little regard to how cohesive or lovely the campuses and their buildings look architecturally.

And you also make another good point: although ON the Penn campus, the Penn Medicine clinical complex does not DEFINE the Penn campus (just as the other referenced academic medical centers do not define the campuses of their parent institutions).

Knight Hospitaller May 6, 2016 4:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cro Burnham (Post 7433283)
You need to be a bit more nuanced: a university campus and a medical denter campus are two entirely things . . . . obviously. I agree the HUP campus is dismal, and it probably needn't have been had the planners decades ago had more foresight. But that barely distinguishes it from just about every other medical campus out there. They are all pretty awful. Hospitals are pretty awful in general, as architecture. Everywhere in the US, not just at Penn or in Philadelphia.

Happy to be proven wrong, if you can show us all the beautiful medical campuses elsewhere in America. Do they really exist?

Agreed. The University campus itself isn't too bad and there have not been egregious repeats of the sixties/seventies mistakes. In fact, although a bit avant-garde for my tastes, some more recent campus buildings have been quite interesting designs. Even if medical centers have tended to be junk, this is really an effort to stand out in a bad way. For beautiful medical campuses, Pennsylvania Hospital comes to mind, but that's hardly a recent example.

Baconboy007 May 6, 2016 5:11 PM

Johns Hopkins is pretty nice.

techchallenger May 6, 2016 6:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by summersm343 (Post 7431596)
I also like Wharton's Huntsman Hall

What do you like about Huntsman Hall?

Philly Fan May 6, 2016 6:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baconboy007 (Post 7433481)
Johns Hopkins is pretty nice.

Some nice buildings, but still a bit of a disorganized hodgepodge:

http://images.ibsys.com/2012/0326/30764040.jpg

Also, this includes the medical school buildings. Penn's medical school also has some nice--and historic--buildings.

allovertown May 6, 2016 9:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajaxean (Post 7432927)
It's truly a wonderful complement to its equally lovely, well-planned neighbor, the Perelman Center. What a beautiful campus indeed! Certainly one of the most lovely urban campuses in the world!

Jeeze you're a miserable person. Why go to Penn if you hate it so much? I wouldn't have wasted 200 grand to go to school anywhere, much less a place I disliked so much.

summersm343 May 18, 2016 3:05 AM

5/17/16

Can no longer see Penn Tower from here.

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...33&oe=57E15A82

shadowbat2 May 23, 2016 5:43 AM

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7586/...fabe062a_c.jpg054 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7771/...4a03b069_c.jpg053 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7103/...172656ce_c.jpg049 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7170/...eff6b05d_c.jpg047 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7013/...6017a221_c.jpg046 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7424/...842b905d_c.jpg044 by tehshadowbat, on Flickr

christof May 23, 2016 7:58 PM

With demolition finishing up, any idea when groundbreaking will be for phase 1 of construction?

Flyers2001 May 23, 2016 8:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by christof (Post 7450651)
With demolition finishing up, any idea when groundbreaking will be for phase 1 of construction?

They should be moving right into excavation, which should take some time. They are going down quite a few floors and they need to be careful because of the museum.

City Wide May 24, 2016 2:33 AM

What ever happened to Penn's desire to move the street that runs between the old Penn Tower site and the building that is slowly eating HUP, the one with a half dozen names?

Flyers2001 May 24, 2016 6:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by City Wide (Post 7451030)
What ever happened to Penn's desire to move the street that runs between the old Penn Tower site and the building that is slowly eating HUP, the one with a half dozen names?

Chop and the city shot it down and it's Convention Ave. The last thing I heard is Convention Ave. will be shut down as there were talks of raising the grade level. A couple months ago you could see outline tape on the side of Perelman where they were suggesting street level be.

Human Scale May 25, 2016 12:48 AM

WE MIGHT BE IN LUCK! Turns out, after a simulated walk-through, the entire floor plate layout and design was scrapped and completely reconfigured! This was presented today.. The picture shows the old floor plate which matches both the old exterior design we all liked and the new exterior design we all loathed. The new floor plate layout would require a new third exterior render we haven't seen yet!

Now I don't know how to use this old technology, let me see if I can post a picture.

jjv007 May 25, 2016 1:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Human Scale (Post 7452221)

Now I don't know how to use this old technology, let me see if I can post a picture.

Well figure it out!
:D

christof May 25, 2016 4:01 PM

Panel OKs plans for new Penn hospital building

http://www.philly.com/philly/busines..._building.html

343 feet isn't bad. Honestly, this looks to be an extension of the Penn Museum...


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