In her latest Changing Skyline column, Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron, whose taste is impeccable, calls the building coming to the 15th and Walnut “visually sublime,” “intellectually rich” and “sophisticated.” Best of all, she says the all-glass, three-story cube will be “one of the city’s finest new buildings.” Not exactly what comes to mind when you think “Cheesecake Factory.”The building has been designed by Apple Store architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which has deliberately given this building some weight to make it work within the context of the other buildings on the corner. “Most glass buildings are riffs on lightness,” Saffron writes, “but here the architects intentionally emphasize the thickness of the transparent skin by making deep cuts into the surface.” The firm’s most well-known Philadelphia projects are the Liberty Bell Center and the adaptive reuse LEED-certified renovation of the 30th Street Post Office. It was the recipient of the Good Design Is Good Business Lifetime Achievement Award this year.The building has not been designed specifically for the Cheesecake Factory; the chain signed on after it was planned by Midwood Investment & Development. The Factory will occupy the second floor, with ground-floor retail to occupy the first (as well as other floors). Japanese apparel company UNIQLO will be one of the tenants. Whatever that turns out to be, the building itself will clearly be an architectural jewel.• Changing Skyline: New Cheesecake Factory at 15th and Walnut: A creamy-rich glass boxDo you like the new architecture? A glass box with character. What do you think? Is it worth a trip to Philadelphia?
Tags: center city, cheesecake factory, inga saffron, walnut street
THAT’S a Cheescake Factory?? It looks more like an Apple store! Granted, I can see UNIQLO in there, though.
I like wandering a city to take photos of architecture and its details. With all the reflective surfaces that one has, I can see it would be a challenge to shoot. Not sure I’d make a special trip to see it, although I’d enjoy spotting it after walking around a corner.
The buildings that intrigue me most are the round ones, like the Disney Theater in LA. I always wonder how the interiors look.
Thanks Rhonda. According to architecture critic, Inga Saffron, the architecture Gods have smiled on Philadelphia.I have not been there, but the cube is urban cool with the minimalism of the Apple stores.
What Inga said is that when I first heard that the suburban temple of caloric overload was touching down at 15th and Walnut Streets, the news didn’t exactly stoke my appetite for good design. I imagined generic box, done up in flat, lifeless stucco the color of American cheese, elbowing its way onto a corner that has been occupied for the better part of a century by three ordinary, but charming commercial buildings.
The architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, (BCJ) thought out of the box and came up with an original design that responds to its surroundings in a deeply informed way. BCJ designed the Apple cube in Manhattan.The glass cube will be one of Philadelphia’s finest buildings.I think this creamy-rich building has great merit!
I agree. It will be an exciting addition to the Philadelphia scene.