Meet the Architects of Our New Home- April 14, 2010

Architects from Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, LTD (MS&R) will give an exclusive presentation to Westphal students, faculty and staff on their design plans for The URBN Center, the new home of the Westphal College. MS&R, winner of a 2010 AIA National Honor Award for their Urban Outfitters project at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, will present on the processes and plans developed over the last year and will give us an inside look at their future academic home on Thursday, April 22th at 6 PM in Stein Auditorium.  The plans include a complete reworking of the 3501 Market St. building into the new home for the college’s programs in Architecture,  Arts Administration, Design & Merchandising, Digital Media, Entertainment & Arts Management, Fashion Design,  Graphic Design, Interior Design, Music Industry and Product Design, as well as for the college’s administrative offices and Historic Costume Collection. There are also plans for the renovation of 3401 Filbert St., which will include an expanded Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, a black box theater and a state of the art screening facility.
3501 Market Street, designed by famed Philadelphia firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, breaks from the tenets of modernism with its iconic facade and is an important building in the history of architecture in Philadelphia. For more information regarding the URBN Center click here.
Event Facts:
What: MS&R URBN Center Presentation
Where: Stein Auditorium , Nesbitt Hall Room 111, 3215 Market Street
When: Thursday, April 22; 6 PM
Cost: Free
More information: 215-895-1029

URBN Center Preview- March 16, 2010

Westphal faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to a presentation of the proposed design for the new URBN Center at 3501 Market Street and 3401 Filbert Street on Friday, March 19th at 2 PM on the 2nd Floor of 3501 Market Street. National architectural and interior design firm Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd., winner of a 2010 AIA National Honor Award for their Urban Outfitters project at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, will present on the design plans developed over the last ten months.
3501 Market Street, designed by famed Philadelphia firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, breaks from the tenets of modernism with its iconic facade and is an important building in the history of architecture in Philadelphia. For more information regarding the URBN Center click here. To attend this presentation, please RSVP to Kimberly Miller at kim.miller@ drexel.edu.

Space to Create- November 2, 2009

Last month for the kick-off dinner for the campaign to support the new URBN center, the future home of our college's design and entertainment & arts enterprise programs, we put together a short video about our college and how we'll turn Robert Venturi's iconic 3501 Market Street building into a world class facility for our faculty and students. Since Drexel's founding, the arts and design have been a part of the core curriculum. The Space to Create video travels back to the turn of the 20th century to tell story of the Westphal College. It features alumni William Sidney Pitman, a southern architect encouraged to study at Drexel by his mentor Booker T. Washington, and Violet Oakley, a painter whose many murals still grace the walls of the Pennsylvania Capital Building. The video also highlights the accomplishments of some of our notable faculty. Most importantly, the video offers a vision for our new home at 3501 Market St and how architectural firm MS&R will take Venturi's 1970s building and create a modern space for our students to imagine a better tomorrow. Please take a moment and view the video here.

Architects Chosen for New Westphal Buildings- August 26,2009

The noted national architectural and interior design firm Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd. (MS&R) has been chosen to design the renovations of 3501 Market Street and 3401 Filbert Street, the two buildings acquired this past December as the future home for many of the Westphal College's academic programs. MS&R is an award-winning design firm, now in its 28th year of practice, whose design work includes the University of Minnesota's Regis Center for Art, Minneapolis' Mill City Museum, the Urban Outfitters Corporate Campus at Philadelphia's Navy Yard, SEI Investments Corporate Headquarters in Oaks, PA, the Herman Miller Design Yard, and the Saint Paul Central and Sahara West Libraries. MS&R is currently working on the Arts Union for Carleton College.
MS&R principals Jeffrey Scherer, FAIA, who leads the firm's workspace and library design practice; Garth Rockcastle, FAIA, who leads the firm's Maryland office and also serves as the Dean of the University of Maryland's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; and Traci Engel Lesneski, CID, are heading up MS&R's design team. The team has been spending time at Drexel auditing the recently acquired buildings and meeting with Westphal programs to learn of our facilities' needs.
3501 Market Street is a four story, 130,000 sq. ft. structure that was designed by iconic Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi in the mid-1970s and features a notable tiled mosaic Market Street façade. 3401 Filbert Street is a 13,000 sq. ft. structure and both properties are sited on over 3 acres of land immediately adjoining the Drexel campus to the west on Market Street, acquisitions which represent an increase in our University City campus of over 3%. The buildings were acquired through the generous support of an anonymous donor.
MS&R has been charged with turning these two existing office buildings into light-filled studios, exhibition and performance spaces that will foster student and faculty collaborations across the College's varied disciplines. Arts Administration, Architecture and Interiors, Entertainment & Arts Management, Design & Merchandising, Digital Media, Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Music Industry, and Product Design, as well as a new gallery for the exhibition of art, a new home for the Drexel Historic Costume Collection, a black box theater, and the college's administrative offices will move to these new quarters in the not too distant future.

$25,000,000 For New Westphal Design Center

The Westphal College is honored to have received the largest individual private gift in the history of Drexel University, $25 million, from a most generous and appreciated anonymous donor. With this gift, the University has acquired two buildings that will serve as a new home for the Westphal College's design programs. The buildings, 3501 Market St. and 3401 Filbert St., will house our programs including architecture, interior design, fashion design, design & merchandising, graphic design, a new product design program, as well as exhibition space for art and Drexel's Historic Costume Collection. 3501 Market Street was designed by iconic Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi and boasts a notable Market Street façade.
The two buildings purchased represent 143,000 square feet and are sited on over three acres. This real estate acquisition means a nearly 5% increase in the size of the Drexel's campus and will allow for future University expansion westward on Market Street beyond 35th Street. Additionally, new quarters for some programs in the Performing Arts and Cinema & Television departments will become available in existing college facilities.
Robert Venturi, winner of the Pritzker Prize, designed the Seattle Art Museum, the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London, Oberlin's Allen Memorial Art Museum, the Provincial Government Center in Toulouse, France, and numerous iconic Philadelphia area buildings. The college has been seeking a new building for many years in order to accommodate increased enrollment and our new academic programs. It is tremendously gratifying that we'll be able to house our outstanding design programs in a noteworthy building designed by an architectural giant.
"Westphal College is at the pinnacle of media arts and design programs in the nation," said the donor, a Drexel Trustee who asked to remain anonymous. "I am pleased to help the College develop a facility that will position it for even greater success." President Papadakis and the University have also accepted a challenge from the donor to raise an additional $30 million to fund outfitting of the buildings and to complete the projects. While the renovations are expected to be finished by the 2010 academic year, we need your help. If you're interested in assisting our fundraising efforts, please contact David Toll, Assistant Vice President, Institutional Advancement, at david.toll@drexel.edu or Dean Allen Sabinson at allensabinson@drexel.edu.
The Philadelphia Inquirer covered this great news when it broke in January, 2008.. Read the Plan Philly coverage here.