philly, by design

50 pages and hours of lost sleep later, i presented my thesis paper earlier this month to a jury of professionals. in the end, my research on the university of alabama's rural studio culminated in a program staged in and applied to metropolitan philadelphia. i'm calling it the "urban studio," and it's mission is to design and build spaces for local community design collaboratives (CDC's). it follows the ideals of the rural studio pretty well, i think, and incoproates all my other research on suburban sprawl, urban blight, and consequential revitalization efforts.

my particular project will be to create a community theater for the kensington neighborhood. the idea is to design a space for economic and social development in collaboration with the new kensington CDC, who are in the process of exploring a similar project. my theater will add on a a bookstore/cafe to make the building mixed-use and functional throughout the day... all in all, the idea was received pretty well, and the next few months will involve fleshing out the design and detailing of the space itself. more to come/more to see...