PHILADELPHIA ART ALLIANCE EXHIBIT
Since Philadelphia’s founding, deep lots with narrow street frontages, bounded on both sides by adjacent structures, have defined many of its neighborhoods. These straightforward three-dimensional boxes, typically 16 feet wide, 40 feet deep and 35 feet tall, have proved remarkably flexible, accommodating shifting demographics, densities, and lifestyles from the 1700s to today. An inherently affordable and energy-efficient living model, the urban rowhouse is being recharged following the recession of 2008. As patterns of daily life evolve, rowhouses have adapted, reconfiguring internal and external elements – stair, stoop, kitchen, bath, roof, windows – to accommodate shifting definitions of home. For this exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, a selection of ISA's attached rowhouse plans were organized into a matrix, comparing width (horizontally) and core orientation (vertically). Visualizing the scale of the box as it informs the logic of a home’s elemental components, the matrix, along with an interactive model, expose spatial opportunities and limitations inherent in the rowhouse typology and point toward gaps and patterns ripe for future study.