Pennovation: The Permanent Impermanence

Post-industrial sites are often remnant urban fabric of increasing value, as cities expand and density replaces sprawl. But these often riverfront sites are also the sites of contamination from earlier eras when environmental concerns were outweighed by the potential of commerce. The University of Pennsylvania’s new technology and innovation campus proposed new life for a former DuPont factory which had spoiled the land with industrial waste, the contaminants of which required strategic thinking and research to ensure future habitation is not injurious to potential occupants. So too, this experimental campus was considered to be a risk in need of taking, but the landscape would continue its palimpsest and the potential re-writing as part of that risk. It was to be designed as a permanent impermanence – a landscape with the potential to adapt to as-yet unknown future circumstances, and therefore nothing should be too precious or expensive as it might need to change and adapt, once more.