PHILADELPHIA | Penn Medicine New Patient Pavilion | 343 FT | 17 FLOORS

[Nova08]

I drove by last night and it was pretty cool to see that the two tower cranes are lit up, one red one blue.

[Philly Fan]

Originally Posted by Urbanthusiat

It’s WAY too early to judge this building.

Agreed.

[Boku]

Originally Posted by reparcsyks

My god, the cladding is hideous. And horizontal band windows in a Norman Foster building. I predict this will be the biggest disappointment to be built in Philly for the rest of this century. Penn has zero taste.

[ajaxean]

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[Scottydont]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

What good is reserving judgement until after a $1.5 billion building is finished? What do you think they're going to do afterwards? Fix it? You're stuck with this monstrosity for probably the next 50 years. Enjoy.

What I'm going to wait to see is how it interacts with the rest of the brick vibe from the rest of UPenn. Lots of brick and older structures in the area... having a shiny golden building like the original renders might have been jarring. This new cladding is less then ideal, but it actually might blend into UPenn in general. So maybe not a trophy building, but hardly a monstrosity as you're making it out to be...

[Urbanthusiat]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

Lmao. You mean it's way too LATE to judge this building since the external design has been long finalized and all the Foster designs looked like crap since day one. All that Penn was deciding was whether to go with slightly more crappiness or slightly less. They decided to go with slightly more.

No I meant what I said. Does your account exist solely for the purpose of trashing Penn's new buildings and Penn in general?

[City Wide]

I think it's fair game to be talking about how this building looks and fits into its setting, and I'm sure we'll be doing that for the next couple years. But in addition to its looks, as a hospital one very, very important factor is how the building works, and that will take years before we know anything about how it's functioning. I'm sure this hospital was designed from the inside out with the size and shape of the site and the various hospital functions leading the way. The cruise ship look is only a (unfortunate) wrapping.

Pearlman looks like stink and in my use of it I'd say it's function is not too much better. Hopefully this new build won't follow in Pearlman's footsteps.

[iheartphilly]

Originally Posted by City Wide

I think it's fair game to be talking about how this building looks and fits into its setting, and I'm sure we'll be doing that for the next couple years. But in addition to its looks, as a hospital one very, very important factor is how the building works, and that will take years before we know anything about how it's functioning. I'm sure this hospital was designed from the inside out with the size and shape of the site and the various hospital functions leading the way. The cruise ship look is only a (unfortunate) wrapping.

Pearlman looks like stink and in my use of it I'd say it's function is not too much better. Hopefully this new build won't follow in Pearlman's footsteps.

I think a team (both internal and external) of folks with hospital expertise design worked on the interior layout, design, and function of the hospital. Input also came from doctors, nurses, and patients to make it more efficient and functioning. There was a detailed article or report about it that I read. If anything, the interior of the building has been over engineered to make it more better for the health practictioners/staff that work there and for the patients that are being cared and treated there. I have no doubt it will be state of the art and fully mission efficient once the building is completed.

For the outside, I 'll reserve my opinion until it is completed and viewed as a whole to its surroundings.

[Scottydont]

Originally Posted by City Wide

I think it's fair game to be talking about how this building looks and fits into its setting, and I'm sure we'll be doing that for the next couple years. But in addition to its looks, as a hospital one very, very important factor is how the building works, and that will take years before we know anything about how it's functioning. I'm sure this hospital was designed from the inside out with the size and shape of the site and the various hospital functions leading the way. The cruise ship look is only a (unfortunate) wrapping.

Pearlman looks like stink and in my use of it I'd say it's function is not too much better. Hopefully this new build won't follow in Pearlman's footsteps.

Does anyone even have a good example of a trophy/sexy hospital?

[frbrown]

Originally Posted by Scottydont

Does anyone even have a good example of a trophy/sexy hospital?

CHOP's new Buerger Center?

[Capsule F]

I like it.

[Jawnadelphia]

From Reddit - r/philadelphia:
https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphi...iew_from_work/

[ajaxean]

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[Scottydont]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

Got it. So spend $1.5 billion first, ask questions later. That sure is savvy thinking.



As frbrown said, look across the freaking street. CHOP is a beautiful, highly functional hospital with great campus development done to very high architectural standards. Other iconic medical centers that have historic as well as tastefully-integrated new buildings include Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. Another incredibly cool but less historic medical campus is OHSU in Portland, OR. That said, there's a very very very wide range of attractive and functional hospital architecture between "trophy/sexy" and "dumpster fire". Somehow, Penn managed to engineer a way to pay top dollar for a building that literally looks like crap.

Personally all of those examples don't classify as trophy buildings or sexy. First 2 are rather dull and last seems like a hodgepodge. But thats just me. I think it's funny you're having a meltdown after 1 panel of cladding has gone up. Not to mention there's plenty of other medium brown items in existence that don't invoke 'crap', but if you wanna focus on that, go for it.

[Philly Fan]

Originally Posted by Scottydont

Personally all of those examples don't classify as trophy buildings or sexy. First 2 are rather dull and last seems like a hodgepodge. But thats just me. I think it's funny you're having a meltdown after 1 panel of cladding has gone up.

Seconded.

[ajaxean]

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[Urbanthusiat]

I’m not convinced that the building will look bad. You’re making it a forgone conclusion but this is a $1.5 billion Norman Foster building and you don’t need to look very far to see how good one of those can look. Several people thought CTC was going to look bad based on the renderings and later admitted that it looked good. I think HUP makes a fairly efficient use of space. A narrower building might be better looking massing-wise, but there isn’t exactly a ton of real estate left near the hospital - they needed to build to maximize square footage more than anything. I think this building is going to look good.

[ajaxean]

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[MichaelScottsOffice]

Originally Posted by ajaxean

What are you talking about? I never heard anyone say the Comcast Tech renderings looked "bad". Similar to Comcast Tower 1, it was just "meh". Neither beautiful nor horrible. And now that it's built up--as is typical--it looks like the renderings, just a bit worse. The early renderings looked more blue, sleek, slender, and transparent. The actual building looks more black, stiff, boxy, and dark, but it's fine overall. I don't know anyone who did a 360* on their opinion, since it's just a glass tower. No matter what you do, you can't go that wrong with a glass tower. For example, FMC isn't stunning or offensive. It's just a reflective glass box that fills in the skyline.

I remember many people pointing out jokingly that the new CTC tower grouping looks like a middle finger, but it's not a big deal since that effect is common with architectural setbacks and spires.

That said, it's interesting you brought it up. Comcast Tech and Penn's New Patient Pavilion are both $1.5B construction projects. Who do you think got their money's worth?

Not lpt

[ajaxean]

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