News   Mar 28, 2024
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Comcast's stunning glass facade (Philadelphia)

going to be there in 2 weeks time. maybe they'll finish up the cladding by then.
 
Good Philadelphia skyline pics....

Bogtrotter: Good PHL skyline pics!!! In that first one- from the plaza in front of the Municipal Services Building (upper right corner of pic) just N of PHL City Hall the Comcast Tower and the Bell Atlantic/Verizon tower next to it dwarf the older smaller buildings below-the one on the left below is the PRR Suburban Station building built in the 30s. The second pic is from the Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park-the new construction since the early/mid 80s dwarfs the older construction-the PSFS (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society-a defunct bank) built to an Art Deco style in the 30s on Market Street just E of City Hall-today it is a Loew's hotel-the William Penn statue atop City Hall is NOT visible in the photo. Before the tall building boom in the past 25 years or so the PSFS building was one of PHLs tallest buildings! It is too bad it was hazy when you took the pics. A good contrast would be skyline pics from the 70s before the tall building change in comparison! LI MIKE
 
I must not be paying attention regarding Philadelphia - I wasn't aware of this building at all, and I should have been. Knowing full well this is by the Robert A. M. Stern firm, it seems to be a sign that they are not as dead as I thought (dead to me that is).

Aside from having a very strong and uncompromised look, it has a number of subtle treatments especially in the interplay of multiple tapers. And that glass cladding, as many of you have noted, is among the best that you will see - probably combination of angle toward the sky, materials, and when photographed. I will spend a weekend in Philly just to see this before I leave from NYC. I shalll see if anything else is going on in their skyline that hasn't been publicised in what I read.

Does this mean that Stern is going in a new direction, or is this just being flexible, I'll be interested in what they had to say about this building, and what they will say when it is finished.
 
The Comcast Tower Center's Owner is...

Everyone: I decided to do some research to find out if a public-accessible observatory will be included at the top of the Comcast Tower. The building owner is Liberty Property Management WWW.LIBERTYPROPERTY.ORG and Comcast-as the largest tenant with the lion's share of the building's office space has purchased the naming rights for the building-just like a stadium or other venues. The building is expected to open for tenancy sometime in 2008. Will an observatory be included? That is to be determined... LI MIKE
 
The Evolution of an Un-Stern-like Comcast Center is Revealing

After making a special trip to Philadelphia last week to see Comcast Center, I finally got motivated to find out more about it - precisely because it didn't look like a Stern skyscraper, even upclose. I came across some timeline material on the evolution of this project from phillyskyline.com. The visuals you see below are a condensed version of the releveant material on their website. While the commentary is mine, part of it is derived from a few newspaper articles that I read on the topic in either the NY TImes or Philadelphia Inquirer. You can see how Stern gradually got to this final result by following his version changes, and factoring in reactions to leaks to the press, etc. All this pushed this project into uncharted territory for his architectural firm.

The original design in 2000 was a classic setback.

Earliest known Stern version is the tallest building on the left of this rendering,
Not yet scaled to be the tallest in Phialdelphia.


comcast_early1.jpg

At one point in 2001, during re-design, the use of glass had been settled upon. Somehow this was leaked to the press, and it was immediately noticed that it bore a strong resemblance to David Childs' SOM model for Freedom Tower in NYC.

A Stern copy of Freedom Tower in Philly?

comcast_sternchilds.jpg

The first time the public saw an official rendering of the building, it was cladded in a beige limestone, not glass. This is a special type of limestone known for its beauty and also expense:

A new traditionalist retreat into masonry for the exterior.

1pp2.jpg
1pp3.jpg

Then there was a version change in 2004, with a new cladding of glass at the top, and with a more affordable granite grey cladding on the main exterior of the building:

Despite version change, masonry still defines most of the structure's exterior cladding.

comcast_middleera.jpg

Stern's staff had something to do with the final result, but just how much remains unclear. We do know that Stern worked on the boxlike top to the end, but he delegated the rest to senior personnel.
 

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