Urban Supermarket

Team

Girard Coalition Inc. and Westrum Development Company
Interface Studio Architects LLC

Context

Girard Coalition is made up of more than 50 neighborhood groups with a mutual interest in revitalizing Girard Avenue. The Coalition has been eager to attract a supermarket to anchor the Brewerytown/Fairmount portion of the commercial corridor and bring fresh produce and groceries back to both communities.

Site

A 2.8-acre vacant parcel—triangular, steeply sloped, and with limited Girard Avenue frontage— situated next to the Girard Avenue Bridge and abuts Westrum's Brewerytown Square development with 144 new townhouses to the north; several old-style row house blocks to the east; and wide, heavily-traveled Girard Avenue to the south.

Challenge

To demonstrate how a supermarket can be developed on a complicated urban site while connecting neighborhoods in a diverse context.

Design

The mixed-use development proposed for the site includes a 35,000 square foot supermarket, several small stores, loft housing, and a public plaza. These elements are organized around a backbone of public circulation that draws people into the heart of the site, creates new gathering places, and reconnects neighborhoods. The overall effect is a new urban precinct that acts as a bridge between existing areas.

To address the site's slope, the design team breaks the development into two interconnected layers. The upper layer accommodates the new street-level retail stores and plaza at Girard Avenue. Its roof hovers above the promenade and engages with the lower layer of development—a 35,000 square-foot supermarket and loft housing along the north edge of the site.

Rather than working against the neighborhood's context with hard edges and a formal layout, the design team imagines the new development as a pavilion on the edge of America's largest urban green space, Fairmount Park. The project's design maintains a low-slung, sculptural profile that fits within a context of two- and three-story housing and storefront buildings. Yet it can also be seen as a distinct element within the neighborhood.