Drexel's New Face

Note: This post originally appeared Tuesday. I have been very busy lately.

Looking up at the louvers in the atrium roof.

Drexel University has pinned much of its hopes for enticing the scholars of tomorrow on an aggressive building program. Even now the future LeBow College of Business is a building-shaped hole in the ground and the grass where the new American Campus Communities building is to go has gone away. Beyond ambition and having a reputation for a painfully ugly campus, the aggressive building program was necessitated by the campus’ large stock of aging, poorly sited, and in many cases functionally obsolete, mid-century academic structures. It’s the natural life-cycle–only in this generation instead of orange brick and urban denial, we’re getting green walls and engagement with the city all around. Some things do get better.

For most the past decade, Drexel’s primary campus ambition ... Continue reading at Hidden City Philadelphia.