Outside the Box

A Q&A with Brian Phillips, principal at Interface Studio Architects and contributor to DesignPhiladelphia's "A Clean Break" exhibit.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Oct 15, 2008

City Paper: How is it that you were chosen for the project, and what were the reasons that Interface Studio Architects (ISA) put itself forward for the project?

Brian Phillips: ISA was approached by [the curating] Minima [modern furniture gallery] to participate as we have established a reputation for modern, green, innovative design.

CP: What exactly were the challenges the exhibit presented?

BP: The brief for "A Clean Break" looks to explore modern, prefab, green design as an approach that has reached a tipping point for residential development. Through popular print publications like Dwell magazine and Web sites like livinghomes.net, these ideas have become mainstream. All three of these elements have captured the popular imagination. Rather than contributing an actual prefab housing project to the exhibit, ISA wanted to show a series of projects that look at the modern, green and prefab issues more inclusively — and specifically in the context of Philadelphia.

CP: How long have you been doing what you're doing, and what made you uniquely qualified to answer Minima's charge?

BP: ISA opened in 2004, hired its first employee in 2005 and has now grown to a studio of seven people. A key project for us began design in 2005 and just recently broke ground. It's called Sheridan Street Housing and proposes 13 green, affordable houses for North Philadelphia that will be LEED for Homes gold rated — in other words, they are high-performance buildings that will have energy bills [50 percent lower than a typical house]. The project won the 2006 AIA Philadelphia Silver Award and has been published widely as an important example of green, affordable housing. We have since explored the idea of green, modern and affordable through a series of projects with both public and private clients. Some of these projects were conceived as prefab, some as a mix between prefab and field-built, and others that will be conventionally constructed completely in the field.

CP: Look at you! How is it you succeeded at what Minima asked of you?

BP: We almost have the exhibit constructed. It'll feature a series of framed boxes that form seating areas for a media projection that will frame our work in the context I outlined a few minutes ago in about 100 slides on an eight minute loop. Large-format photographs of vacant land in Philadelphia will emphasize the critical opportunity this city has to encourage infill housing development — examples of which are represented by our work, as well as the other designers who have work in the exhibit. This is a key point of our presentation. Philadelphia's tipping point is a triangulation between available land, great location, affordability and an influx of creative-class types. All of the projects we show speculate on how this energy can help to produce infill activity in key areas of Philadelphia.

Phillips' brief description of what he's prepared for "A Clean Break":

This is a five-unit project right off the main drag in Northern Liberties. It includes three three-story townhouses, and two bi-level units above off-street parking. Half of the client group is a prefab modular manufacturer so we started from the idea that these would be modular boxes. The goals were to capitalize on both the economic and build-time efficiencies of modular as well as find the architectural design opportunities. We developed a scheme that is very expressive of the box-ends with a special window and interesting materials.

The client brief required us to provide 13 green, affordable houses on a highly constrained site in North Philadelphia. Our guiding principle was to design simple, super-efficient buildings so that real savings on energy bills could be achieved for their low-income owners. Green technologies include a solar hot water panel (providing domestic hot water), exterior solar shades and a whole house switch near the front door that ensures that all of the lights have been shut off when leaving the house.

The site plan was one of biggest challenges as the parcel is 39 feet deep and 450 feet in length. Our first move was to turn the axis of some of the houses parallel to the street. An interlocking L-shaped geometry of houses, yards and parking spaces was our solution to manage these competing elements. The houses were conceived to be modularly constructed, although the real bidding process seems to be pointing to field building as the most cost-effective approach considering the local labor environment.

The Cramer Hill assignment is very related to the Sheridan work. It is an infill project for 19 new homes on scattered lots. The neighborhood is characterized by vacant land and an eclectic collection of housing types some of which indulge pastel colors and highly textured materials. We designed a very iconic house form featuring fiber cement siding painted vibrant colors. We hope they add up to a coherent visual layer that helps knit the neighborhood together. They will be Energy Star rated and are designed to allow off-site fabrication to be utilized — either as modular boxes or panelized construction.

The 100K house site is in the East Kensington section of the city, which is gritty and industrial, but close to transit and a mere 15-minute train ride to downtown. The area has been resettled by artists, musicians and adventurous urbanites seeking an alternative vibe. The marketing position is to satisfy live/work creative lifestyles by providing a modest, green, modern option for living. This really is a study in production housing. We are now developing a "line" that will offer base models related to different infill site conditions and accessories that give some design control to the buyer. The developer hopes to launch a Web site soon that will allow people to design and price their own 100K houses.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Interface Studio Architects LLC, 1400 N. American St., 215-232-1500, is-architects.com.

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