George Pepper Middle School in Eastwick and the International House in University City are two of Philadelphia’s most representative examples of Brutalist architecture. The former, a commanding pile of rigid geometry – designed by Claudill Rowlett Scott in 1969 – currently sits vacant and vandalized following a wave of Philadelphia public school closures in 2013. The latter, designed by Bower & Fradley architects in 1966, is a landmark of the so-called “Philadelphia School” whose future was put into flux by the changing mission of its founding organization. Are these buildings oppressive, blighted eyesores – as some have characterized them – or are they utopian visions worthy of a second act? Take-in both of these concrete behemoths while discussing their history, architectural significance, and their future potential for serving the community again.

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Framed by the picturesque Schuylkill River and the secluded Wissahickon Park, Philadelphia’s East Falls neighborhood attracted several dozen progressive clients during the mid-20th century who wanted proximity to Center City and access to nature at the same time.  They hired a wide spectrum of architects – from the celebrated Richard Neutra to local talents such as Earle Bolton, Jr., Elizabeth Fleisher, Newcomb Montgomery, and others – to design their distinctive new residences.

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The Steven and Toby Korman House (1971-73) is the last house that Lou Kahn designed, and it is the last work that was completed in his lifetime. The design was a collaboration with landscape architect Harriet Pattison and marks Kahn’s increasing interest in the integration of landscape and architecture, a country house in the classic sense tied to ideas explored earlier in his Kimbell Art Museum and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial designs.

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When Oskar Stonorov married Betty Foster, a quiet corner in northern Chester County became the unlikely center for an astounding cast of characters in national and international architecture between 1940 and 1970.

As portrayed in films like The Philadelphia Story (1939), Philadelphia’s Main Line is a quintessentially elite enclave, both geographically and socially impenetrable – a “state of mind”, as one historian has observed, where “everyone here knows everyone else, or, if they don’t they never will.” In reality, the Main Line is a place profoundly shaped by technological and cultural change, and a location ripe with interesting modern architecture (and certainly, good architecture of other eras as well).

When one considers the work of Paul Rudolph (1918-1997), one thinks about his Florida houses of the early 1950s and his landmark works in New Haven, Boston, and Hong Kong. Similarly, Antonin Raymond (1887-1980) is best remembered as a “father of modern Japanese architecture,” and for his sensitive translation of that country’s classical and vernacular architectural traditions into modernism.