Areas
Blooming Day
Mantua, a marginalized community located in West Philadelphia, has a long history of suffering from the city's policymaking and planning. In the 1940s, it was identified as a "dangerous" zone by a discriminatory practice called Redlining. In the following years, Philadelphia Urban Renewal and University of Pennsylvania's expansion, city's infrastructure developments further prevented the residents in the neighborhood from thriving. In the last two decades, gentrification started to greatly influence the community. Many of the minority residents were forced to leave, and space was taken over by developers and university students. In the past year, under the impact of the pandemic, the situation intensified as the whole neighborhood fell into despair.
We used a now-closed art studio in the neighborhood as an anchor point, designed an urban revival plan for a cultural hub, providing open public space, recreations, social services, and art-related activities. We intend it to be an amplifier to broadcast the energy of the existing art studio to the whole community; at the same time, help construct a better living environment, draw in more social and educational resources, and achieve cultural preservation.