UVA architects have decided to let bygones be bygones on the massive South Lawn project, but they’re still asking the administration for more discussion about the general course of campus architecture.
In September 2005, 36 members of the faculty of the architecture school and the art department signed an open letter to UVA, questioning the school’s traditional approach to architecture on campus. They especially disapproved of the conservative design on the $105 million South Lawn project, which UVA architect David Neuman defends as “right down the middle” of the ongoing debate between modern and traditional architecture on campus.
Last week, the modernists wrote a new letter stating that the South Lawn design “is admittedly not all that we had hoped.” Instead of further criticizing the plans, however, the letter asks “that there be an open debate at all levels of the University as to its architectural future.”
Specifically, the architects are asking for a public forum to review upcoming projects, including the Performing Arts Center, the Studio Art Building and Campbell Hall. Furthermore, they request a symposium “in which the virtues of those designs the University has selected to pursue are explained to the public.” It’s easy to say that a design reflects the spirit of Jefferson, the letter says, but it’s another thing to “demonstrate how, precisely, a design does this, to have one’s thinking and methodology examined for error and to explain why alternative strategies were not pursued in their stead. The smallest piece of scholarship at this university is subject to this process. Should not the largest be subject to it as well?”
UVA officials have said they will consider the proposal.—John Borgmeyer
