PROJECT OVERVIEW

The 861-bed Chestnut Square housing development provides Drexel University students with two bedroom and four-bedroom suites organized as duplexes, with a living room and kitchen at the entry level and bedrooms alternately above and below.

Six-story residential blocks, of which the top four floors are clad in precast concrete – finished to match Indiana limestone which is on the façade of nearby LeBow College of Business at Drexel University – sit above transparent ground-level retail and cantilever toward each other to frame a view toward the Mandell Theater (1973).

A cast stone 18-story residential tower on 32nd and Chestnut Streets forms a visual counterpoint to the neighboring Left Bank apartment building (BLT Architects, 2007) and Drexel's Main Building (Joseph M. Wilson, 1891).

Chestnut Square reinforces Drexel University's evolving urban West Philadelphia campus, which features other new buildings including, in addition to the Papadakis Building, Millennium Hall (Erdy McHenry Architecture, 2009), and LeBow College of Business (2013).

Owner

American Campus Communities

PCI-Certified Precast Concrete Producer

Universal Concrete Products

Architect(s)

Voith & Mactavish (VMA); Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA)

General Contractor

Hunter Roberts Construction Group

Key Project Attributes

• Chestnut Square combines an 18-story residential tower of two-and-four-bedroom flats for Drexel University students with two six-story “liner” buildings that offer a choice of two-and-four-bedroom duplex suites.

Project/Precast Scope

• White cement with local aggregate
• (4) levels of sandblast finish with form liner and thin brick insets
• 710 panels totaling 141,180 SF of architectural precast concrete