Pearl Street + DesignPhiladelphia PopUp Place

Philadelphia, PA (population 1.5 million) is home to the Chinatown North/Callowhill neighborhood; a rapidly changing neighborhood with an industrial past that contains part of the Reading Viaduct, which is planned for reuse as an elevated Rail Park, and a wide range of residents who reflect the diversity, disparity, and creative potential of the larger City.

Working with landscape architect Walter Hood, Asian Arts Initiative (AAI) led a stakeholder-engaged community planning process focused on the Pearl Street alleyway, which functions as a de facto backyard connecting AAI and a number of community organizations and residences along a 4-block corridor that passes beneath the Rail Park.

AAI will produce a series of physical interventions, weekly micro events, a series of monthly First Friday events, and an annual Block Party aimed at increasing the everyday interactions along and attention on the Pearl Street Corridor. These activities will lead up to the Center for Architecture’s signature city-wide DesignPhiladelphia Festival in 2015, which will launch with a PopUp Place exhibition sited at the intersection of the Reading Viaduct Rail Park and the Pearl Street Corridor, that examines the development of both icons in the neighborhood. ($644,885)