Pretty curves all in a row

As you move through the house, you come face to face with the house's split levels. Since the widest part of the house faces Fourth Street, the rooms are staggered on each side of the stairs. In a sense, each floor dead-ends into the adjacent room.

That means, when you're in the kitchen, the adjacent living-room floor is at table height. It's an arrangement that lets you cook and chat with your guests. Meanwhile, on the bedroom levels, the staggered levels encourage privacy, and even allow the guest room to be sectioned off with sliding pocket doors.

The final reward for taking the stairs to the top is a terrace with almost 360-degree city views. Because the house is slightly taller than its 35-foot neighbors, the architects punched openings in the brick parapet that surrounds the deck to make the house feel lighter at the top.

Now that the Split Level House is done, it's plain the architects needn't have feared using brick. There's nothing wrong with the earthy and enduring material. The problem is how it gets used in Philadelphia. In last week's column, I praised Fumihiko Maki for daring to insert a sheer glass building amid the red brick of the University of Pennsylvania campus. QB3's houses apply the opposite means to make peace with Philadelphia's favorite building material. Some day Philadelphia will move beyond the brick-or-modern debate.

Like the rounded PSFS building - or, for that matter, the rounded Reading Headhouse across Market Street from it - the grand curve of the Split Level House is an anomaly in tradition-loving Philadelphia. Cities dearly need such aberrations. They help remind us of the qualities that we value in our city, as well as the ones we wouldn't mind changing once in a while.

Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.