The Collaborative has released a report presenting the dozens of design concepts developed at its Industrial Sites: An Interim Reuse Charrette.  The charrette challenged four teams to design temporary uses for vacant industrial sites selected by the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation and the New Kensington Community Development Corporation.

The charrette provoked a new sense of fun and folly toward an often intractable problem. The results focused on temporary, low cost, high impact solutions which can help reclaim, repurpose, and raise the profile of vacant industrial sites in neighborhoods throughout the country.   Read More »

By Lee Stabert

A plan is powerful. Lines on a page are often the first step towards realizing the transformation of a space, or a neighborhood. The Community Design Collaborative is driven by this idea.

“Design is not a luxury,” explains Executive Director Beth Miller. The organization was founded in 1991 by a group of architects and planners who wanted to improve Philadelphia neighborhoods. For 20 years, the Collaborative has been coordinating pro-bono preliminary design services for community groups, helping them realize their ambitions while offering pragmatic council.

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By Elizabeth Fiedler

Design professionals will unveil plans to turn a few of Philadelphia’s old industrial sites into spaces for new job-generating industries. The project that matches community groups, owners of industrial buildings with local architects and planners.

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By Gabby Warshawer

Designs were revealed last week at an Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites event. Infill Philadelphia, sponsored by the Community Design Collaborative and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, involved having design teams come up with creative visions for reusing three old industrial spaces: The wing of an old factory and an abutting lot in North Philadelphia; a vacant manufacturing complex in Kensington; and a section of land on the southwest bank of the Schuylkill. Read More »

By Katherine Sharpe

Last year, ReadyMade broke the news about the dumpster pools of Brooklyn—a story that quickly grew wings and took off, gathering attention from corners of the mediasphere as varied as the New York Times, BoingBoing, ABC News and NPR. This year Macro-Sea, the company that conceived and built the pools, is back with a new project, a “psychological recycling center” called Glassphemy! (Read the New York Times article about Glassphemy!, here.) And ReadyMade is teaming up with Macro-Sea to sponsor a contest to get our readers involved in the recycling and design process, too.

Not so long ago, in Philadelphia, a meeting of architects and urban planners was convened by the Community Design Collaborative to think of ‘interim uses’ for empty lots around the city. One of the lots in question was always strewn with piles of broken glass. The architects and urban planners furrowed their brows in thought: would it be possible to create a project that would lure people away from their littering ways, converting the lot for more constructive uses?

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Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, toured the Philadelphia Navy Yard on Thursday as part of the Reinventing Older Communities conference to see how the complex is being reused for manufacturing and commercial headquarters.  Bernanke met with Infill Philadelphia: Industrial Sites partners the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation who have led the development of the Navy Yard which has attracted over 100 companies with over 8,000 employees, including Tastykake and Urban Outfitters.

To find out more, read the New York Times blog Ben Bernanke’s Field Trip to Philly and the Washington Post article Bernanke Tours Pastry Factory, in a Sign to Main Street

By Ariela Rose

Infill Philadelphia has more than one reason to celebrate. The five-year urban revitalization initiative will complete phase three of the program this fall, and they’ve also been awarded a $25,000 grant from the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Community Action Grants program.

Grant recipients are judged on ULI’s three core values: sustainability, infrastructure and workforce/ affordable housing. Conceived by the Community Design Collaborative, Infill has excelled in all three areas, bringing attention to the city’s countless vacant and neglected spaces.

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By  Melena Ryzik

How do you one-up a Dumpster pool?

For David Belt, a developer who created a stir last summer by installing do-it-yourself swimming pools made from Dumpsters in a semi-secret location in Brooklyn, the answer was once again in trash.

His latest project, called “Glassphemy!,” is billed as a psychological recycling experiment. The idea is to make recycling a more direct, visceral experience and to purge some New York aggression simultaneously. Read More »

By Jon Campisi
Star Staff

The sign, undoubtedly recognizable to Philadelphians, can still be seen looming high above the Hunting Park Avenue site.

But the business that manufactured tasty treats for city residents and beyond for almost a century will soon vacate the property.

Last month, it was announced that Tasty Baking Co., which is in the midst of transitioning to its new headquarters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, had sold its manufacturing plant at 2801 Hunting Park Ave., and its corporate offices and distribution center at 3413 Fox St., to Metro Development Co. for $6 million.

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By John Steele
Keystone Edge

Commentators past and present, from Charles Dickens and Upton Sinclair to Jon Teaford and the opinion section of the Detroit News, have both celebrated and bemoaned the decline of urban manufacturing. While unchecked manufacturing has historically caused pollution and exploited workers, the proud tradition of American innovation built our great cities. Now, rusted factory silos and empty, unremediated brownfields scream a stern reminder of our industrialized history, for better or worse.

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