Philopolis
« Keeping Philadelphia's memory alive — between reactivated heritage and repurposed infrastructure »
Making the museum of Philadelphia’s history tell that history already through its façades, whose materials and motifs echo the architectonic strata of the neighbourhood.
Set in the historic heart of Philadelphia, the former Franklin Institute — a Greek Revival masterpiece designed by John Haviland between 1824 and 1826 — housed the city's history museum from 1941 until its closure in 2018, consigning its rich collections to the silence of storage. Made invisible by the urban upheavals of the twentieth century, the site suffers a double enclosure, both physical and in memory.
Philopolis takes up the architectural challenge of adaptive reuse through one central question: how can the memory of a place become the lever of its own reinvention? The project orchestrates a bold dialogue between reactivated heritage and a repurposed modern infrastructure. By transforming the car park into an immersive museum journey — leading the visitor from the "Chaos" of the visitable stores to the "Cosmos" of thematic galleries shielded by a screen of perforated brick — the intervention simultaneously gives the historic building back its visibility. The latter recovers fidelity to its original calling to become the Lyceum, a civic and academic temple. Joined by a translucent nave of laminated stone and glass that opens onto reclaimed public gardens, these two once-opposed objects unite. Together they shape an architecture attuned to its urban context, paced by vertical fins that unify the whole.
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Morphogenesis — initial state
Morphogenesis drawing showing the car park's dominant formal feature: its parapets, which form long horizontal bands.
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Morphogenesis — step 1
New vertical lines are introduced to sit better within the neighbourhood and restore an earth-to-sky connection.
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Morphogenesis — step 2
The regular grid is worked to introduce diagonals echoing the car park's ramps, creating vanishing points that draw the eye toward the historic building, highlighting it and restoring it to a central place within the block.
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Morphogenesis — step 3
The residual space between the two existing structures is occupied to connect them tangibly, through a programme at the crossroads of the museum and the academic spaces.
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Morphogenesis — step 4
Making the city museum tell the story of the city through its new façades — using materials and motifs that directly echo the urban strata of the neighbourhood.
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Axonometric in the manner of Auguste Choisy, presenting the main heritage and architectural points of interest on the project site
On the project site, the historical interest is matched by a material heritage interest. Among the notable architectural elements are the Pennsylvania blue marble façade, the groin vaults and segmental brick masonry vaults, the black marble chimneypieces, and the moulded profiles and joinery typical of the Greek Revival.
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Landscape section across 7th Avenue (north–south) before the architectural intervention
This landscape section shows the east façades of 7th Avenue as they currently stand. The car-park structure, with its horizontal lines emphasised by the parapets, contrasts sharply with the façade of the historic building immediately to its right.
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Landscape section across 7th Avenue (north–south) after the architectural intervention
This landscape section shows the value of intervening on the car park's façade, shedding its horizontal lines in favour of a visual harmony with the surrounding neighbourhood.
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Plan of the Lyceum's first level and the ground floor of the repurposed car park
To capture as much pedestrian flow as possible, the museum entrance is strategically placed at the corner of Market St. and 7th Avenue. To announce this entrance from the street, a large glazed atrium opens onto the commercial boulevard of Market St., also serving the new shops and the ground-floor bar/café. After collecting their ticket at the box office, the visitor reaches the upper spaces via a first curved ramp. The museum's ground floor holds the service spaces — cloakrooms, toilets, the shop and resting areas.
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Plan of the Lyceum's second level and levels 1N/1S of the repurposed car park
On the second level of the historic building unfolds the programmatic sequence that links the museum and the civic temple. I drew on my own experience at the UPenn archives during my stay in Philadelphia to create a route for consulting the museum's works. One first enters a glazed airlock to leave one's belongings, then steps into the archive consultation room suspended above the foyer below. The room connects, via a footbridge, to a vertical circulation core giving access to the museum's visitable storage on the southern floors.
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Plan of the Lyceum's third level and levels 3N/3S of the repurposed car park
The Lyceum's third-level plan shows the study rooms, meeting rooms and offices created in place of the current storage spaces. To the north sits the glazed roof that bathes the foyer and the archive consultation room in overhead light. On the museum side, the existing structure (in blue) is distinguished from the additions (in red). The differentiated layout returns: visitable storage south of the central atrium, and thematic galleries closed by columns to the north.
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Perspective section on a north–south axis, through the museum atrium, the archive consultation room and the central spaces of the Lyceum
This section reveals how the museum's floors are organised. To house a large volume of objects of very different kinds, I chose to devote part of the museum to a visitable store, set on the southern floors and directly connected to the archive consultation room. Here the archive, the work, is raw — shown without artifice. Drawing on a Greek cosmogony, this is what I called the CHAOS. Its counterpart is the COSMOS: the northern floors hold the spaces where the museum's collections are staged in thematic galleries. At the centre of the image is the atrium that separates the southern floors from the northern ones. It is crowned by a glazed roof bringing central overhead light that, in particular, illuminates the double-height rooms.
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Collage. View from the reclaimed gardens at the heart of the block. Dialogue between the historic building and the repurposed car-park infrastructure
The gardens, today left abandoned, are reclaimed to create new public spaces in a neighbourhood full of offices and schools. This view highlights the dialogue between the painted-brick façade of the historic building and the new façade of the nave. The upper part of the nave is wrapped in a laminated-stone system — thinned alabaster bonded to glass — which keeps out the direct sunlight that could damage the works. The lower part is fully glazed, marking the entrances and opening the view onto the gardens from the gallery.
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An archive room at the interface between the project's two existing structures — keeping Philadelphia's memory alive
The archive consultation room is suspended between the historic building and the rehabilitated former car park, thanks to a hybrid timber-and-steel frame that avoids placing columns in the foyer. It is lit by indirect overhead light through the brise-soleil set beneath the glazed roof. On its west face, a large glazed surface overlooks the foyer below.
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Occupying the residual space between the two existing structures — a way to connect them programmatically and visually
The foyer walls, finished in a mineral render, line those of the car park and the historic building to create a pared-back atmosphere that showcases the light washing down the walls. The minerality of the foyer contrasts with the warmth of the timber in the archive consultation room.
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Axonometric section through the reclaimed and transformed historic building
My approach to the heritage intervention on the existing fabric was to express a vow of fidelity to the building's original state as intended by the architect Haviland — in both its form and its functions. I began by recreating the heart of the building's intellectual life: the amphitheatre. With this intellectual and academic function restored, I carry forward the transmission of the place's past memory. On the upper level, with the same intent of restoring the original state, I recreated the original library, so that the Franklin Institute archives could be brought back here. Finally, on the third level, I open roof apertures. Here again this is an act of restoring the building's first state, for overhead openings did indeed exist in the nineteenth century, as Haviland's plans attest. These openings bring natural light into storage spaces that have become study spaces, while revealing the timber roof structures that were previously hidden.
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The amphitheatre comes back to life at the heart of the historic building — a way to ensure the transmission of the place's past memory
For the interior fit-out of the new amphitheatre, I retain the proportions of the original tiered seating, but in terms of materials I wanted to keep the intervention legible — hence the choice of timber for its warmth, its contemporary character and its acoustic qualities.
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Collage. The 7th Avenue façade reveals the museum machine, whose ramps are at the heart of the visitor's path
As the visitor moves from the southern floors to the northern ones, and rises through the levels, more and more light filters through the façade screen, whose bricks gradually open up. This architectonic effect is the built embodiment of the passage from chaos to cosmos — of elevation through access to knowledge.
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The car park's original frame, left bare, contrasts with the architectural additions that create the visitable storage spaces
The interventions in the car park focus on precise architectonic elements meant to evoke the place's first function. Ruts in a dark terrazzo recall the passage of cars and guide the visitor through the floors. The existing ramp parapets are extended to create seating. The design is considered down to the handrail, whose geometry evokes the automotive industry, movement and speed.
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The visitor leaves the peristyle promenade to enter the double-height rooms bathed in natural overhead light
The double-height rooms — created by cutting openings through the car-park slabs — offer moments of breathing space along a route otherwise marked by the low ceilings of the parking levels. They enjoy more natural light thanks to the glazed roof crowning the atrium, and they stage the flagship objects of the museum's collections.
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Collage. The new address at the corner of Market St. and 7th Avenue
In my project, the differences between the interior functions are expressed on the façade. The stone base becomes semi-transparent in places to create porosity at ground level and connect to the street. The body of the upper floors presents a brick screen whose dynamic perforation carries symbolic meaning. Finally, the crown is lighter and more discreet: entirely of metal, it echoes the language of Philadelphia's skyscrapers. What unifies the three languages — and also ties them to the historic building — are the vertical fins that wrap the entire building. They give a shared visual unity to the four façades and a regular rhythm, set by the spacing of the Lyceum's Tuscan columns.
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Detail axonometric section
The fins offer a significant constructive advantage. Fixed to the car park's frame, they carry the cladding wall of the museum's façades, avoiding the need for a second structure. This cladding wall also answers purely practical needs, such as acoustically and thermally insulating the museum functions.
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Experiencing Philadelphia's history within a raw infrastructure whose original function has not been entirely erased
Chaos and cosmos are nonetheless united by a single language: the concrete skeleton deliberately left exposed across the floors of the former car park. The coolness and minerality of the concrete contrast with the richness of the objects on display. The architecture steps back to let the collections take the stage.
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A final museum level whose architectural language changes with its function: an open floor for temporary exhibitions
In a fitting symbol, the city reveals itself fully on the top level. This large open floor is intended for temporary exhibitions. It is bathed in natural light from the curtain wall to the south and the glazed roof crowning the atrium.