Rag Flats
Philadelphia
Onion Flats

With geometry and color, Onion Flats concocts a surprise mix of residences behind the brick shell of a former rag factory

© Don Weston

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Jane F. Kolleeny

Think with your hands, not your heads! That’s the motto of Onion Flats, a Philadelphia architecture firm founded in 1997 by two brothers, Tim and Patrick McDonald, who were joined by architect/builder Kurt Schlenbaker in 1999. Converting rundown industrial sites into residential and mixed-use projects, the firm has so far completed three developments—Market Flats, Capital Flats, and Rag Flats—doing everything from designing, building, and selling to managing the properties. The practice has no offices; instead, the team goes beyond the drawing board, setting up shop on-site to experiment with built forms. To empower a younger generation of architects, they employ students from architecture schools of three Philadelphia universities where Tim McDonald teaches, and hire friends to handle work in other disciplines as needed.

Though the odor of fish has long since gone, the name Fishtown remains. It refers to an area in Philadelphia near the Delaware River where, in the 1830s, when ice refrigeration was a luxury affordable only by the rich, fresh catch was brought for pickling, salting, or smoking for the less-well-heeled. Today, it is a tightly knit working-class community, where ramshackle houses are passed down through generations of Irish Catholic families.

Here in Fishtown, Onion Flats saw an opportunity to build 11 multifamily housing units in and around a former rag factory. Combining four kinds of dwelling units on the site, the McDonalds purchased the two-story facility from a local masonry contractor and cleaned it up. “The abandoned factory had been used as a dump for 10 years and was occupied by a family of feral cats,” says Tim McDonald.

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Formal name of Project:
Rag Flats

Location:
Philadelphia

Gross square footage:
25,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$3.6 million

Owner:
Onion Flats LLC

Architect:
Onion Flats LLC
P.O. Box 14081
Philadelphia, PA 19122