Light House Row & Conveyor Belt Porch

CLARK PARK

Light House Row brings the sense of procession and quiet spectacle experienced along I-76 facing Boathouse Row into a residential block, translating that linear rhythm into everyday domestic life. The reimagined vignette reframes passing views as a sequence of architectural moments, where repetition and variation work together to create identity. This procession is not only visual but tectonic, used to articulate a vocabulary of details unique to the block, from facade modulation to thresholds, so that each unit participates in a collective language experienced in an exalted procession.

The Conveyor Belt Porch draws from the memories my family has of the social life on the continuous shared porch on 45th Street, reimagining it as a more accessible, flowing edge of community. Designed with the elderly in mind, it allows residents to remain seated yet still engaged, transforming the porch into a slow-moving social connector rather than a static threshold. Archival images from my grandfather of life on the porch illustrate how everyday interactions - watching, greeting, laughing - can be amplified and further entangled with a continuous, moving surface. In this way, the porch becomes essential infrastructure for care, visibility, and connection, reinforcing its role as a vital space between private life and the street.

The text on this panel is from a Strother family history book that a relative self-published in 1983, the result of extensive genealogical research and the careful preservation of oral histories. It traces our lineage back to the late 19th century, post-emancipation, when my ancestors migrated from Virginia to Ardmore, in Greater Philadelphia, to work as domestics. 

Combining the text with the reimagined vignettes, this panel reflects on procession not only as physical travel, but as a continuous act of building, adapting, and connecting. It traces the paths my family forged over time and underscores how movement, both forced and chosen, has become a sort of lifeblood for life, community, memory, and belonging.