A village grows at Design Philadelphia

You expect to see a rich panoply of architectural types when you walk along Broad Street in Center City. Tall office towers and boxy theaters. Classical banks and trendy restaurants. Subway entrances and newsstands. A darling, lipstick-red house with a front yard, a tiny porch, and solar cells.

Wait a minute. . . . Can we roll that tape again?

It turns out it's not just one house. Right before a city's eyes, an entire neighborhood of small, affordable, energy-efficient, prefab houses has sprung up on an empty lot across the street from the Kimmel Center.

Just when people are starting to fear that no one will ever build a house again, design connoisseurs Eugenie Perret and Elizabeth Oliver have managed to erect a village. So what if it's meant to last only two weeks?

Perret and Oliver assembled their little "pop-up" neighborhood for DesignPhiladelphia, the annual event created to celebrate the functional arts of architecture, product design and graphics. Wedged onto a lot between a church and a recording studio south of Spruce Street, their eclectic collection of houses, furniture and practical objects is a manifesto on the state of home building in the city and beyond.

After watching with dismay as Philadelphia developers turned out an array of big, traditional, carbon-guzzling residences during the recent construction boom, Perret and Oliver said, they wanted to prove that small, sleek and carbon-neutral can be beautiful, as well as more practical for the leaner times ahead. This year's DesignPhiladelphia, which began yesterday, provided them with the opportunity to make their arguments in a place that many Philadelphians pass regularly.

"We talk about sustainability and living light on the land. I wanted to make these ideas real for people," said Oliver, who produces design exhibits for Minima, an Old City furniture store that Perret owns. "We're trying to show that you can build these houses here in the city."

They've titled the installation "A Clean Break," because that's what they're hoping for in the world of home design.

The intended life of their little subdivision may be short, but for the moment it offers everything a modern neighborhood could want: good-looking, comfortable homes; spacious decks strewn with cool outdoor furniture; a vine-shrouded garden wall; and a solar-powered bike rack. And unlike conventional neighborhoods, everything in it is recyclable.

You can plop into one of the biomorphic, all-weather chaise longues designed by Miami's Pie Studio from reusable polyethylene strips, then rest your organic martini on an end table fashioned from the crushed remains of glass bottles.

It's so peaceful, you might momentarily forget that you're in the heart of a noisy city and steps away from its busiest street. How many energy-neutral, low-cost, prefab homes boast a view of Rafael Vinoly's Kimmel Center?

Parts of "A Clean Break" resemble the recent exhibit on the history of prefabricated houses at the Museum of Modern Art - the New York museum also erected a small neighborhood in a parking lot for its "Home Delivery" show. But MoMA spent millions on its demonstration project. Perret and Oliver put theirs together with $175,000 from donors and in-kind contributions from designers and fabricators.

"We had the idea first," Perret said. But MoMA was faster on the draw. "A Clean Break" features a mix of local and national designers.

The show includes two compact furnished houses that can be expanded over time. The lipstick-red house, built by Canada's MiniHome, is already big enough for a couple. It contains an eat-in kitchen, living room, bath and sleeping loft, and borrows some of the space-saving strategies of a trailer house.

The difference is that it doesn't need to hook into a trailer-park water or electrical system. It comes with a solar-powered generator, water tanks and a composting toilet, which make it possible to live off the grid.

"We imagine it in an ecological trailer park," Oliver said, though she added that it could easily be adapted for city life.

Beyond the houses, the lot is dotted with environmentally friendly stuff whose designs Perret and Oliver couldn't resist. There are groups of mod furniture, a solar-powered rack for rental bikes, a space-saving design to provide seating at bus shelters, and patio bricks that sprout their own grass. One exhibit shows how to create a vertical garden for growing your own food.

The installation marks a big advance for DesignPhiladelphia, now in its fourth year, said founder Hilary Jay, executive director of the Design Center at Philadelphia University. In the past, most exhibitions and lectures were held in galleries or designers' studios. Visitors had to make a conscious decision to stop by.

"We think this exhibit unites urban planning, architecture, graphic design all under one roof," Jay said.

Or, more accurately, all under one sky."