Passing Tests!

Friday was a huge success for JKR's aspiring architects. We were four for four in ARE exams taken and passed!  Blake and Greg passed Schematic Design. Tim passed Construction Documents, and Zach passed Programming & Practice. These tests aren't easy, but we've got a smart young staff, and we're knockin' tests down left and right. 

Southstar Lofts Sneak Peek

zach and Dave check out the mocked up corridor

talk about natural light

Broad Street view

Today was pretty frigid, but we managed to field a group of 10 people to tour our new Southstar Lofts project which is under construction at the corner of Broad and South Streets.  The 85 unit apartment building is about three quarters of the way done.  We were able to view the construction at various levels of completion since each floor is a little bit more done than the next.  see all the pictures from the tour here.

Regal Moorestown Grand Opening

Last night was the grand opening of the brand new Regal Cinema in Moorestown, NJ.  Paul, Rick and Greg were on hand to receive their much deserved VIP treatment.  Judging from the crowd, the theaters were getting rave reviews.  After some cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, the audience was treated to a sneak preview of The Hunger Games-Catching Fire on the huge 55' screen in the RPX theater.

The design masters

A new addition to the revamped Moorestown Mall

A packed crowd

Progressive Grocer awards Fare and Square store of the month!

 
Progressive Grocer, the premier voice of the retail food industry, recently awarded our Fare and Square project for Philabundance its store of the month.  Read about how the design of the small store helps boost sales and keep people healthy at Progressive Grocer! 

Whoa! Eckberg is FAST!

Did you know that Lauren Eckberg runs? Did you know that she runs really fast? Were you curious just how fast? Well, Lauren ran her first marathon ever this weekend and did some serious damage to her competition.  I'm not sure of her overall place, but she had to beat a few thousand people. I mean, her mile pace got increasingly faster over the course of the race! How sweet is that?

Point Breeze project moving along

View from Capitol Street

A week or so ago you may have read about our latest project planned for Point Breeze in Naked Philly.  There have been tons of comments both good and bad about the project, either way, we're excited about the project and can't wait to get it started.  If last night's design review meeting with South Philadelphia H.O.M.E.S is any indication, the project was very well received. Can anyone say standing ovation? The project replaces an old warehouse with 50 new single family homes. We really tried to be contextual with the neighboring buildings, by matching materials and heights, while still giving the houses their own contemporary identity.  Let us know what you think.

Pumpkin Carving 2013

The winning pumpkin design

Each year we put our creative skills to good use and break out the pumpkin saws and beers and compete for big prizes for best looking pumpkin.  This year was no different, with the exception that someone finally unseated Natalya for best carved pumpkin!  Dave and "one armed" Jen took the title for their pirate ship themed pumpkin.  Check out all the pictures on our Facebook page.

JKR announces two new hires

Elisa and Jeff

Last week we added two new designers to our already burgeoning design department.  Elisa Lanzutti is a world traveler, and has worked in Italy and the United Kingdom before taking her talents to the States.  She is working on some tenant fit out work at the former St. Agnes Hospital on Broad Street and a new retail project in the Great Northeast.  Jeff Pelcheck comes from another small firm in the area focusing mostly on institutional work and healthcare projects.  A recent Temple University grad, Jeff is working on a large scale residential project in Connecticut. We're looking forward to them joining our team and sharing their talents!

North 28th gets new Art Piece

Our North 28th project at, you guessed it North 28th Street, in Brewerytown got a sweet new art installation by noted artist Stephen Powers. You may recognize his work riding along the Market Frankford El trains. He did all the Philly love letters. I'm not sure what this particular piece is about, but it looks to me like it's some sort of engagement. Guy on one knee with a pizza? Or is that an abstract diamond? Either way, it's still pretty cool.

Green Treks teams up with JKR for informational video

Tiff, Izzo, and Ferro

This past Monday, Green Treks, the award-winning Philadelphia-based nonprofit communications company teamed up with JKR Partners to film their upcoming educational series about STEM careers.  If you aren't familiar with STEM, it's an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  The short film is geared toward high school students that might be interested in a job in these fields but may be too scared to ask the questions they really want to know.  Tiffany and I were interviewed by a local high school student, and we quelled her fears about how much Math architects really use. Contrary to what most people think, we really don't use much complex Math.  After filming in the office,we headed to one of our construction sites around the corner where site superintendent Dave Ferro from Clemens gave us some hands on experience.

Bridgeview Project gets big press

The empty lot that rests at the corners of Columbus and Catharine Streets has been getting a lot of attention this past week after Jose presented our project to the Central Delaware Advocacy Group. This particular site has been bouncing around our office in some form or another for at least the last five years with nothing but fruitless pie in the sky dreams.  This site is too good to be sitting idle for so long.  Bridgeview, a 75 unit residential development, has been planned by our designers to give future residents equal access to the city and the river.  It will be especially nice if they build this.  This area is ripe for redevelopment! We'll be updating more as the project progresses in a few weeks.  In the meantime read more about the project here.

Philabundance Opens Supermarket in Chester

Grand opening celebration

Philabundance, the local food charity that has been doing great work in the Philadelphia area feeding the hungry for years, has upped the ante and built the first non-profit supermarket in the country.  We were lucky enough to help them along in their efforts to rid Chester of the dubious distinction of being a food desert.  After a few tries, we finally got the plan right, and we had the good people at Sullivan Construction knock it out of the park building it. 
Check out some news stories here: Philly.com and here and one more here.

ICSC Convention in Atlantic City

The International Council of Shopping Centers' convention was held this week at the Atlantic City Convention Center where Dave, Paul and Jerry were doing their networking thing late into the evening showing off our best work in hopes of landing the next big project.  It's an IDEA exchange, so hopefully they got some good new ideas, and dished out a lot of good ones to potential clients.

More good news for Broad Street Walgreens

Our flagship Walgreens continues to get rave reviews! Check out the full story in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

N.Broad Street looking up

nice welcoming stair

pretty sweet courtyard if you ask me

love that brick pattern

with views like this, there's some incentive to take a few years to graduate.

You gotta give credit where credit is due.  MGA Partners did a bang up job on their new Morgan Hall complex at Temple University.  North Broad Street has been on the up and up for the last few years, but this project will put it over the top.  This project will finally put people on the street, Broad Street in particular and really put Temple back on the map as not just another commuter school.  It looks like they pulled out all the stops with great materials, great views, great landscaping, and pretty good urbanism.  Check out the photos here and here by Bradley Maule.

WINDOW, Charette

One of the participants presenting her team's design

Some of our sketches

Laura here: Mike and I competed in a design-build competition, “WINDOW,” by AIA Philadelphia Associate Committee yesterday.  The Charette took place at the Philadelphia Center for Architecture, and the competition was to design a window display for Save Some Green, an eco-friendly store on 20^th and Chestnut.  The store owner told us about his business and his goals for the display, and then we were given an hour to come up with our initial ideas.  After presenting to a panel of judges, we had a final half hour to make adjustments based on feedback given to us.  Although we were not selected as the winners of the competition, the owners were pleased with our design, and are interested in working with us for a window display in the future.  We also had fun sketching our vortex of reclaimed wood and eco-products and got some free food.

Check out the winning design in a few weeks! 

Tiff...Architect superstar!

Tiff is not only an awesome architect and author. She's won game shows on tv, MC'd AIA national events, and now is on her way to becoming an international Tweet Chat superstar. If you're like me, you're thinking, "what the hell is a tweet chat?" Well, it's like a more sophisticated chat room.  For the real definition, click this Anyway, she was so good last year when she mc'd at the AIA convention that she was asked by AIA National to host this tweet chat titled Women in Architecture last week.   Clicking that link will allow you to see the whole conversation.  It was a big success with 525 tweets, by 69 unique twitter users, reaching 35,912 twitter accounts! You can follow her at @architektmuse

Annual Phillies Outing

You need a drink before you see the Phils these days.

After a minor rain delay, the Phils got back to beatin on the Cubbies.

Butch hooking up the specials.

Serious Sergi and a photobombing Jose.

the Boss getting his birthday on.

If it seems like our office is a lot of fun, that's because it is.  In keeping with our yearly tradition, which started way back when the Phillies were actually good; last Thursday we had our annual JKR day at the Phillies.  This year was special in that it was also the Boss Man's 65th birthday.  He took full advantage of his newly granted senior citizen status and wisely got his subway ride to the ballpark for free. With age comes wisdom I guess. And like we always do, we all went back to our second favorite watering hole where we got our celebratory drinks.  The drinks taste much sweeter when the Phils win big. 

Farinella Here: Front Street Lofts is rolling forward in some familiar JKR territory. Front Street's newest mixed used building will join two JKR staples (Spotlight Theaters and The Capital Grille) in the heart of Hartford. The building will feature 121 residential units on top of 15,000 square feet of retail space and also boasts a fitness center and a roof deck overlooking downtown Hartford. Bob, Rick, Cory and myself have been pushing the design forward and are anticipating a construction date in the spring of 2014, claiming 3 out of 4 of Front Street's newest developments. 

Welcome to Walgreens?

Blake here:  On the last day of July in 2013 Philadelphia opened the doors to a new breed of Walgreens, and the first of its kind in the state of Pennsylvania.  Located at the corner of Broad and Chestnut Streets welcome to Walgreens on steroids.  I mean when was the last time you got fro yo at a Walgreens?  Or used a digital interface to see how a certain makeup would look on your gorgeousness before you made the purchase, ladies?  Well you can here.

Then - as Borders

Previously this was a place to feed the mind as Borders.  Now you can feed it all with food, cosmetics, reading materials, and medication within the newly renovated 3-story space.  And to add to the Philadelphia experience inside you'll find areas dedicated to local favorites such as the Crayola, Philadelphia Water Ice, Hershey's, Center City Pretzel, and Just Born companies.  Check it out for yourself, this is no ordinary Walgreens.

JKRP Softball > .500!

Zach Here:  Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the Yuengling Light Lager that no one would touch. Maybe is was divine intervention. Or maybe it was just a level of concentration and skill not seen on the JKRP softball diamond in quite a while. Whatever it was, it was awesome. An 8-run 2-out rally in the third inning had Ewing Cole on their heels and JKRP rounding the bases with every stroke of the bat. After we took the lead, solid defense kept us there.  Long flies to the outfield were caught with ease and ground balls were expertly handled by the infield; halting the opposition's offensive machine. Our runs only came in two innings, but they were enough to lift the JKRP squad to a 13-12 win over Ewing Cole's 'A' team.  With this hot and humid victory, the team's record creeps above the .500 mark as we head into the final games of the regular season.

It's not chilly... It's Peru

Izzo Here: Following in the footsteps of the great master architect Jerry Roller, I decided to take the same vacation as he took in November last week with a few of my college buddies, and ventured to Peru to see the ancient Incan civilization of Machu Picchu.  After hiking the Inca trail for 4 days, I realized it's not a vacation I would recommend to most people.  Architects might like it, or world class athletes, but the average person might want to be dropped off at Machu Picchu via helicopter. 14,000 ft above sea level takes a toll on an out of shape sea level dweller like myself and the endless stone stairs didn't help.  Overall it was a great experience.  Was really impressed with all of the old stone work and most impressed with the trail itself.   Would I go again? Nope.

A parade marched through Cusco

traditional dancing ensued.

"sorry officer, I thought my knife met the required size limit."

Peru

I stopped at least forty times on this trail to rest. 

picture perfect.