ISA Architects recently completed a project in North Philadelphia called Tiny Tower.

It is a 6-level, 1,250 square foot single family home built on a small 12' x 29' lot. That's about the footprint of two parking spaces. It feels like a house you might find in Japan.

Its siting is on a secondary street, akin to a laneway here in Toronto. As you can tell from the above picture, the adjacent parcels are largely undeveloped and/or used for parking.

The height of the house is 38 feet and the section looks like this:

The kitchen is in the basement (along with a light well). The living room is on the main floor (entrance to the house shown below). The third level is a workspace. And the rest of the floors are bedrooms. There's also a rooftop patio. All of the circulation happens on one side of the house.

I don't consider 1,250 square feet to be a small house and so this post is not about that. "Tiny Tower" does, however, feel like an accurate name.

I like these kinds of projects because they are about taking something with little perceived value -- in this case a small parcel of land -- and creating something cool.

That's how you create the most value. You have to discover and do things that most other people are overlooking.

Images: ISA Architects

When I lived in Philadelphia I survived on food truck food. My go-tos were an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich for $2.50, a bowl of spaghetti for $4.50, and a pretty substantial chicken burrito for somewhere around $5 or $6. The food was good. It was filling. And it was all priced perfectly for a poor student, which I was at the time.

I still remember when Renzo Piano came to the University to talk about potentially renovating the design school. Somebody stood up and asked if he had considered the placement of food trucks in his plans. Piano responded by saying: “I am Italian. Don’t worry. I will provide for the food.” This is how ingrained food trucks were and are in the culture of the city.

The other great thing about these food trucks is that they are a low-cost way of starting your own culinary business. Many were run by immigrants. And some of these “trucks” were so small that I used to have to duck in order to make my way to the concession window. There was nothing fancy about them. But they worked.

These days I don’t really eat at food trucks anymore. They are not as widespread here in Toronto as they are in Philly. I also find them expensive and the portions are usually so small that you have to order 2 or 3 things. They feel like the anti-food truck.

I appreciate that there’s a growing market for trendy and “gourmet.” But there’s value in low-cost options and in lowering the barriers to entry for aspiring food entrepreneurs. There are numerous examples of humble food trucks growing into full fledged restaurants. Let’s encourage more of that.

One of the small things that I liked about living in Philadelphia was the rational way in which street addresses tended to work.

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say you wanted to go to Brooks Brothers in Center City and you discovered that the address was 1513 Walnut Street (which it is). 

By looking at the first two numbers, you would immediately know that the store sits between 15th Street and 16th Street on Walnut.

If the address you were given was 1601 Walnut Street, you would know that your destination is now between 16th Street and 17th Street, but probably right at 16th.

You would also know that the numbered streets run north-south and the streets named after trees run east-west. (Of course, not all of the east-west streets are named after trees.)

No need to pull up the Google machine.

All of this stems from William Penn’s incredibly rational 17th century grid plan for the city – one of the first examples in North America.

If you’re interested in grids, you may also enjoy this post from last year: The spatiotemporal hierarchy of urban form.

Photo by Jay Dantinne on Unsplash