Architecture critic Inga Saffron thinks Dilworth Park's new comforts, which won't be complete until November, are undermined by an uptight and controlling sensibility. JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer)

They've reconstructed the space in front of Philadelphia's palatial City Hall, furnished it with a cafe, a high-tech spray fountain and movable chairs, and rebranded it Dilworth Park. But the vast granite prairie is still very much a plaza, with all the weaknesses the word implies.There is no doubt that this important civic space, once a smelly, run-down municipal embarrassment in the heart of Philadelphia, has been greatly improved by the Center City District's Paul Levy, who marshaled a dream team of Philadelphia's most renowned designers and engineers. The amenities, from the food vendor to the picnic lawn, are reason enough to applaud.

Yet Dilworth's new comforts, which won't be complete until November, are undermined by an uptight and controlling sensibility. Under Levy's leadership, the new design was intended to be the polar opposite of the 37-year-old plaza, a hardscape extravaganza by the late Vincent Kling, the same midcentury modernist who exhausted a couple of quarries building LOVE Park, the Centre Square towers, and Municipal Services Building and its plaza......Continue Reading

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