Thin Flats

Format
Brief

City
Philadelphia

State/Province
PA

Country
USA

Metro Area
Philadelphia

Project Type
Multifamily For-Sale

Location Type
Other Central City

Land Uses
Multifamily For-Sale Housing
Parking

Keywords
Green roof
LEED Platinum certified
Neighborhood revitalization
Rainwater harvesting
Rowhouse
Small-scale development
Solar water heating
Sustainable development
ULI Awards for Excellence 2010 Global Winner

Site Size
0.38 acres
acres hectares

Date Started
2007

Date Opened
2009

A brief is a short version of a case study.

Located among the rowhouses of Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood, the eight-unit Thin Flats lives up to its name: each of the two-story units, stacked in pairs, is only 18 feet (5.5 m) wide. Developed by Onion Flats, a family-run Philadelphia-based firm, the new stacked duplexes are a rethinking of the traditional Philadelphia rowhouse—usually a long, narrow, light-deficient typology. The LEED-Platinum project uses light wells to brighten the core of the units, solar panels to provide domestic hot water, green roofing to decrease thermal gain, and rainwater-harvesting cisterns for irrigation of yards and gardens. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared that this blend of environmental and design sensibility “makes Thin Flats easily the most exciting rowhouse project to come out of Philadelphia’s recent construction boom.”

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Owner/Developer
Onion Flats, LLC
Philadelphia, PA

Design Architect
Plumbob, LLC
Philadelphia, PA

Website
www.thinflats.leedphilly.com

Principal Author(s)
Theodore Thoerig, Patrick Pontius

ULI Awards for Excellence 2010 Global Winner