Housed in Philadelphia’s historic Navy Yard, this multi-phased corporate campus provides new design studios and office space for the company’s distinctive retail brands, while celebrating the idiosyncratic remnants of 125 years of shipbuilding. Embracing both the history of the Navy Yard and URBN’s modern culture by layering old and new, the design team found inspiration in the factory characteristics of the buildings—industrial materiality, open volumes, and access to daylight—to repurpose the buildings’ major function from production to creativity. The synthesis of four measures—art, culture, economy, and environment—results in the transformation from a production-based yard to a creativity-based campus.
AIA Architecture Award
AIA Minnesota Honor Award
Business Week/Architectural Record Good Design is Good Business Award
National Trust for Historic Preservation Honor Award
Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award
Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia Achievement Award
Urban Land Institute Global Award for Excellence
Client
URBN
Location
Philadelphia, PA
Project Type
Workplace
Size
463,068 SF for all four phases
Role
Architect | Interior Designer
Status
Complete
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“This is a great example of a reuse project. The new design brings out the best of the old and highlights the historic features in ways that might have been less successful with a more traditional response. The tension between old and new, tactile and smooth, light and dark, indoor and out, all of this while holding in character with the corporate image—genius.”
—National AIA Architecture Awards Jury
