In a former pipe shop transformed into the national headquarters for Urban Outfitters, the Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites design challenge got off to a rousing start with a program that highlighted the possibilities for industrial reuse and announced the sites and teams engaged in the design challenge.

Presenters Bill Struever, President and CEO of Baltimore based Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, and John Grady, Executive Vice President of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, saw  industry as a key to sustaining Philadelphia’s diversified, resilient economy and former industrial buildings as valuable assets.  In his keynote address, Struever shared examples of his award-winning industrial reuse projects, which have transformed empty factories into offices, distribution centers and housing.  Pointing to the ability of refurbished urban industrial buildings to attract business, stimulate job growth, and create a strong sense of place, Struever said, “Old industrial buildings make terrific places to live, work, and have fun.”

John Grady provided an overview of Philadelphia’s sizeable existing industrial sector and future opportunities  for encouraging new, city-friendly industrial activity.  “For older industrial districts, part of the strategy will be rezoning and allowing for new uses. If it remains industrial, it won’t be industrial in the way we and the zoning code define it today,” he predicted.

Expert panelists Nina Rappaport, architectural critic and Publications Director at Yale School of Architecture Books, and Eva Gladstein, Executive Director of the City of Philadelphia’s Zoning Code Commission, joined in a conversation, moderated by Paul Sehnert, Director of Real Estate Development at the University of Pennsylvania and Collaborative board member. They discussed the untapped opportunities to accommodate new forms of modern industry through innovative zoning, planning and design.

Repurposing industrial areas could mean new types of mixed-use development that integrates working, shopping and living. “Some neighborhoods have lived next to industry for decades and we acknowledge that industry is in neighborhoods and the zoning code can manage mixed-uses—industrial mixed with commercial and, potentially, residential.” observed Gladstein

Rappaport commented on how new forms of manufacturing—smaller, nimbler, and cleaner— can be a great fit for an urban landscape. “Industry is no longer being done at a massive scale.  Guided by the virtual, and by technologies liked computer-aided design, people are producing again in their garages and going back to a small scale and producing on their own.  So what could this mean for a Philadelphia, a Brooklyn, or a Baltimore?” said Rappaport. “Expose what goes on inside the factory on the outside, so that production becomes a vital part of the city again. So that making things becomes part of our lives again,” she added.

Three volunteer firms will use the Infill Philadelphia design challenge to explore these ideas and develop designs that graft modern urban industry onto the bones of Philadelphia’s remarkable industrial heritage.  SMP Architects has volunteered to work on the “small site” to create leasable space for artisanal industries in a wing of an old factory on American Street, near 3rd and Lehigh Avenue.  DIGSAU will focus on the “medium site” at 100 Oxford Street in Kensington to develop a design for an industrial/residential mixed-use project for a multi-building manufacturing complex.  Charles Loomis Chariss McAfee Architects will address a sustainable site plan for industrial flex space at the “large site” which is a 50,000 square-foot brownfield, just north of Bartram’s Garden along the Schuylkill River.  For more info about the sites go to the PlanPhilly article.