The developers don’t need to be into that idea.  Under the new code they won’t be able to have garages north of Washington.

fix that first pic

It’s a quiet, secluded block…who cares if there are garages here? On a more major thouroghfare, maybe that’s an issue. But this is an acceptable design in an appropriate location, that needs the development.

Gar………………………….bage.  

Who hires Harman Duetsch over and over?   All their garbage looks like an intern threw some old recycled projects together and called it a day.  These poor developers must really be getting shafted.  This stuff is atrocious and uninspiring. 

They must be cheapest in town as their ‘designs’ cant actually be attracting people.  This is not even anything but lowest common denominator puke.

Please, for the love of God, add a clickable high-res link!

Our website is undergoing a redesign, and once that goes through we’ll put up all the clickable high res links you can handle. Our current site makes it very challenging to do it, for whatever reason…

The reality most likely is that the developer isn’t throwing a ton of money to the architect
for design so therefore they will utilize layouts from previous
designs that they have had success with. You get what you pay for.

How about you drop the garages on row houses… it leaves too many curb cuts, eliminates street parking, hurts walkability, is unappealing, and a sign of poor urban design.

They look great to me.  I like the garage fronts – and these homes will have back yards as a result.  The new zoning bs will not make garage front houses illegal.  Garage front houses, like all houses with garages, are more desireable and sell for more money.  By attempting to prohibit garage front houses, or garages in general, you are forcing developers to build less desireable houses that will sell for less money.  As a result, your house will appraise for less money, and be worth less money, because the no-garage comps nearby will weigh down the top end.  Have fun excluding the high end, maybe move somewhere else and try it there, it ain’t going to happen North of Washington.

I have to say, I agree with others about getting rid of garages on rowhouses. Yes, I know, parking is an issue and garages increase the values of homes, and blah blah blah. Sure, those are fine things. But I also find that garages on the front of houses hinder the walkability of the neighborhood. And for a neighborhood like grad hospital, shouldn’t that be a major priority? We’re not an auto-commuting neighborhood. We walk and bike a ton! It is much more enjoyable to walk on a street unobstructed by curb cuts than to walk on one with rows and rows of garages, out of which cars may pop at any moment.

I also don’t buy the argument that excluding garages will lead to SUBSTANTIALLY less desirable houses, or lead to a decline in the neighborhood. There are garageless parts of the city that are very pleasant, primarily neighborhoods that are close to center city like grad hospital.

So you enjoy your less valuable Philly house with no garage and I’ll enjoy my more valuable Philly house with a garage.  Problem solved!

While I’m not thrilled with the facade, the reality is that to get 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths on a lot that narrow and shallow, you simply don’t have many floor plan layout options.  You can do the straight, single stair run or the perpendicular run.  Both have their drawbacks, and really the straight, single stair run doesn’t get you a garage and a bedroom on the first floor.  It always comes down to math and if you made the spaces more generous you’d be looking at a 2 bedroom house, and a 2 bedroom house is a very difficult resale.

G-Ho’s legacy will be its garages and ugly houses.  Fortunately its location is driving its value, and it will always at least have that going for it.  

Maybe one day many decades in the future when we have efficient mass transit and high speed rail, the successor to Naked Philly will feature a Delorean Time Machine blog post about all the queer looking G-Ho houses with valuable first floor space dedicated to automobiles.  Our enlightened progeny will chuckle about how strange people’s priorities were in that chaotic day and age.

When an architect works with a developer on this scale of building, there really is no option besides a predictable outcome and a predictable and mostly blase design– the developer is mandating to the architect what components make up the homes. Sure, you can complain about the architect recycling the same old hat, but in these situations there’s only so much a designer can fight for.

Thanks NB, and I agree. Many complain about the same home being built over and over but the successful/efficient designs are driven by the site constraints (typical phila rowhome lot in this case) and will continue to get built if the developer has success selling and can find cost efficiency with replicating a past project. Being an architect myself, I do sympathize with desiring more creative design where it is lacking. People need to understand that the architect only has so much power to flex their design muscles when a developer already has a fixed agenda and is more or less just paying for an Architect’s stamp on a set of drawings.

[...] months to come, especially because of the serious amount of development going on around the corner, on League Street. 0 COMMENTS Posted in Graduate Hospital | Tagged bay windows, New construction, [...]

[...] the summer, we told you about a plan to construct five new homes on the 1900 block of League Street, the last street in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood before you hit Washington Avenue. At the [...]