VMDO Architects

The mission of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation is to attract graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral candidates to the University of Virginia of extraordinary intellectual range and depth. It supports those who possess significant scholarly potential in areas of leadership, scholarship, and citizenship. The Foundation is building a physical and intellectual center for its Graduate Fellows, to bring them together and form a sense of community around the dynamic range of students and faculty across many disciplines.

The project consists of three main components:

1) Graduate Fellows space, including a multi-purpose reception hall, library reading room, classrooms / seminar rooms, and research and study spaces for the Graduate Fellows;

2) Foundation Administrative Office space; and

3) Courtyard / Garden space, a significant, private, outdoor space to center the project and provide a venue for contemplation, respite and a wide range of functions.

The Graduate Center for Jefferson Fellows serves as the home of the program’s academic community. Fellows involved in the planning of the project stressed the importance of a design that would be intensely forward-looking and fresh in its solutions and materials, but also serve in the spirit of Jefferson’s architecture and academic ambitions. Through its rich interplay of spaces, the Center is designed to facilitate conversation, study, research, and teaching – vital components of an intellectual community. It is meant to act as a source of inspiration, a place of interaction, and a locus for the exchange of ideas.

The Center supports very different modes of operation: daily use of the Commons and Library Reading Room allows for brown bag lunches and informal gatherings at a community table, yet a simple reconfiguration in furniture can transform the room for a symposium lecture, thesis defense, film screening, or formal reception. Abundant windows and clerestory glazing offer transparency to the courtyard and the additional wings so that Fellows are aware of their colleagues and can engage them in conversation or gain momentum for their own scholarship.

The Center is designed to entice high-caliber graduate students considering the University for their graduate and post-graduate research. The building and grounds offer a clear, defining character and a powerful sense of place that are also:

• Magnetic in attracting and bringing the community of Fellows together into a meaningful and memorable place that is also dynamic, vibrant and vital.

• A source of inspiration, place of interaction and locus for exchange of ideas.

• Sensitive to the environment and sustainable in terms of the materials used, building systems employed, and thoughtful use of resources and energy.

• A lighted building, a beacon to the University and directly linked to the community where Fellows can share their learning with a broad audience.

• Openly supportive of conversation, study, and teaching as matters of importance; filled with dedicated individual and group academic spaces.

• Situated so that one can move between inside and outside, between buildings and rooms and courtyards and gardens, in the tradition of the University’s best buildings and landscapes.