The Maven

• Philadelphia, PA

• 28-unit apartment building with ground floor office space

• 22,645sf

• completed 2022

• project website: The Maven

developer: Khosla Properties

general contractor: Tester Construction Group

structural engineer: StructureLabs

photographer: Jeffrey Totaro

1533 Ridge Avenue is in the heart of the emerging Ridge Avenue commercial corridor where we strove to design a contextual and yet modern building.  The projected crisscross brick pattern intersects the projecting brick “trim” around the windows and is all done within common running bond coursing.  The upper façade contains no cut brick, all bricks are either full stretchers or full headers.  In the Construction Documents each individual brick is drawn. At the base the piers taper to meet the ground indicating that this is a modern building. The brickwork here attests to the true craftsmanship of the masons on the job.  In the construction photos there is an image of the jig they created to lay out the pattern, it was actually drawn over the full façade for the masons to follow so it remained perfectly coursed.