The Clay Studio reflects skilled craftwork inside and out in Philadelphia’s South Kensington neighborhood

The Clay Studio (TCS)—a longstanding Philadelphia nonprofit art center—will soon be moving into a new building designed by DIGSAU in the city’s South Kensington neighborhood. Behind a facade of brick that breaks with the traditional Philadelphia streetwalls that are more representative of much of the city’s industrial history, DIGSAU’s design not only sought to give a community-facing organization a new space but to reflect the clay work being done within the building. 

Spanning approximately 37,000 square feet, the building will rise four stories and be topped with an open-air rooftop that provides a view of the Center City skyline. Programmatically, the first floor will contain gallery spaces, a shop, the Claymobile—a mobile clay facility intended for children—a demonstration studio, and back-of-house spaces. The second floor will be home to classrooms and requisite kiln rooms and production spaces, while the third floor will have open workspaces and studios for artists in residence. The top floor will host offices and a classroom that connects to the open-air rooftop, which will also function as an events space.

As the program of the building pushed it to the edges of its zoned height and property line, “a primary design challenge was to represent the volumetric aspects of the art form pursued within the building,” said DIGSAU principal Mark Sanderson. As the facade couldn’t protrude any further out, the design focused on trying to represent the clay-making process on a flat facade. This led DIGSAU to select two types of brick: a buff-toned brick to represent unglazed bisqueware, and a bright orange brick to represent work that has been glazed and fired.