Changing Skyline: Perking up the Parkway

From the moment that the Barnes Foundation decided to move to Philadelphia, the arrangement was cast as a perfect marriage of interests. The Barnes would become financially sustainable in a new home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The city would finally get a lively cultural attraction to occupy a primo spot on that great boulevard of dead space.

The $200 million museum design unveiled last week promises to be everything the celebrated art foundation could have desired: refined, serene, uplifting.

But there's one thing it's not, and that's lively.

The disconnect between the objectives of the two parties in this union demonstrates a trait that continues to vex civic architecture. Designers know how to make buildings that dazzle us visually. Yet they're often so intent on satisfying their client's complex organizational needs, they forget about their obligations to city life. The Barnes design, by New York's Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, gets an 'A' in aesthetics and an 'F' in urbanism.

It's not too late to improve the situation, especially at the critical, downtown-facing 20th Street corner, since preliminary site work won't begin until November. In anticipation of the Barnes' opening in 2012, the city is preparing $10 million in streetscape improvements aimed at restoring the primacy of the pedestrian realm along the famously car-centric parkway.

The projects, which range from new sidewalks to a delightful children's park, amount to nothing less than a redistribution of land from the driver to the walker and the bicyclist. They will help the parkway evolve into a real urban place. How ironic it would be if the agent of this momentous change failed to contribute to the parkway's improved street life.

Given the intense controversy that dogged the Barnes' decision to move its renowned collection of Impressionist and modernist art, the architects' strategy for siting the building is understandable. They were committed to replicating the intense, intimate, almost spiritual experience of visiting the original suburban Merion galleries.

So, the linear portion facing the parkway is envisioned as an abstracted version of the Barnes' neoclassical home. And like the original, the new building will be surrounded by lush gardens that insulate visitors from the noisy city.