Thanks to Philly Brownstoner for the heads up on this story detailing planned renovations at City Hall’s Dilworth Plaza, currently one of city’s biggest missed opportunities. From The Architects Newspaper:
Designed by Urban Engineers with Kieran Timberlake and landscape architects Olin, the new plaza will displace an underutilized 1960s-era sunken space that does not easily accommodate events. The redesign calls for a programmable fountain and a cafe with outdoor seating to bring street life to the plaza. The new space can be reconfigured to accommodate ice-skating and concert seating for events of up to 8,000 people.
With new porous paving, Dilworth Plaza will additionally provide significant reductions in runoff and quadruple the landscaped area absorbing airborne pollutants. A 36,000-gallon underground cistern will collect rainwater for on-site irrigation.
The project is being funded by the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) II grant program.
