Opening its doors on February 23rd, 1878 - The Kensington National Bank building designed by Frank Furness is a beautiful and ornate stone structure and one of the last remaining Furness bank buildings left standing in Philadelphia. At the time the bank opened its doors The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that the building is an ornament and commands great admiration. We certainly felt the weight of that statement and approached our wrapper building delicately and with sensitivity to the historic bank structure. Our proposal takes cues from the bank in terms of scale and material but we intended our design to set back as a backdrop to the bank.The main material along the outer wrapper of our building is a light grey complimentary brick with select pockets of decoration and modern brick detailing. The existing building is currently occupied partially on the ground floor by Wells Fargo Bank and will become new commercial/retail space. The bank will move into our new structure, fronting on Girard. The new residential portion of the building will include 59 units, 20 bike parking spaces, amenity space and a roof deck looking back at Center City Philadelphia. Historical buildings make up much of the rich character of our cities.The adaptive reuse and renovation of existing buildings is often necessary to maintain neighborhood scale and structure, but it is also practical. As we enter a new age of building, where greater sensitivity must be given to our environment, adaptive reuse makes “undeniable sense as an emission-reduction strategy.” We value adaptive reuse and renovation projects for their contextual relevance. We strive to modernize underutilized buildings without demolishing historic character, instead exposing the building’s history. Many of the things that our firm prioritizes in any built project -- material, light, shadow and form -- are inherently embedded in historical structures and easily lend themselves to curation or reframing in order to tell a meaningful story.