Structured Walk and Site Study
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Partnered work completed in collaboration with Jesus Frias, Josh Shen, and Yuhan Zhou
This project featured a geographic section of southwest Philadelphia, a vibrant neighborhood running alongside industry zoning lining the Schuylkill River. The neighborhood, which was once sustained by the industry, now feels burdened by abandoned buildings on land that could be reclaimed by Philadelphia’s public parks system. This short project included an intentional 3-hour walk through the neighborhood, examining what it means to exist in this location and reimagining what a future for this land could be.
The final part of the project consisted of a design for a ‘Bothy’ that could be placed in the neighborhood, along with a map of our findings. I composed an accompanying soundscape that tells our story, playable above.
On Grays Avenue, the concrete arteries of West Philadelphia pulse with a different rhythm. The Grays Avenue of yesterday was where building materials were produced and where, after having been depleted of human use, they returned to be scrapped.
Now, life dances to the theme of a reemerging nature. The warehouses and manufacturing plants, once a bastion of industrial prowess, have since surrendered to the embrace of the wild. Gone are the rigid binaries of city and garden, industry and flora. In their place, an inevitable amalgamation of the two emerges.
Bartram’s Garden, once confined by tracks and zoning lines, bursts forth, deconstructing the very borders that sought to contain it. Nature has reclaimed this land once again, forcing the creators of its confines to acknowledge that they too are subjects of nature’s dominion. The purple “industry zoning” has long since evolved into green tendrils, not erased but blurred, a reminder that boundaries are merely lines on a map, easily reshaped by the flow of life. Now the city is a park; the park is the city.