On the west side of City Hall in Philadelphia sits Dilworth Plaza; a public space designed in the mid-1970s as an urban renewal project. The plaza received funding through the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program and is in the midst of a major makeover.
Philadelphia's Dilworth Plaza lies above several levels of transit infrastructure and is known to those that use it as a labyrinth of granite walls and stairs as well as a home for the homeless and the current site of Philadelphia's Occupy Wall Street tent city. In fact—since the beginning of the Philadelphia Occupy Wall Street protests in October this is possibly the most Dilworth Plaza has ever been used in its 40 years.
Dilworth Plaza hosts a number of aesthetic and logistical issues which include: surfaces cladded in stark granite, various level changes confusing to everyone and impossible for those with disabilities, no clear entrance to the transportation center below and vacant and isolated arcades commuters must walk through to get to the concourse.
In the 1600s, the space that Dilworth Plaza (formerly known as Center Square) and City Hall currently occupy was envisioned by William Penn to be the cultural, social and commercial hub of Philadelphia. Failing to meet any of Penn's wishes in its current incarnation, Philadelphia-based architecture and landscape architecture firms OLIN and KieranTimberlake have teamed up with the City of Philadelphia Office of Arts Culture & the Creative Economy (OACCE) and the Center City District to rejuvenate this historic civic space as the cultural, social and commercial hub it was meant to be.
Construction on the new plaza will begin this fall and is expected to be completed by early 2014. The new Dilworth Plaza will feature amenities such as: a cafe with indoor & outdoor seating, a large lawn, a kinetic fountain, tree groves, space for events and a new gateway to and from the transportation center below.
