School of Architecture shines with Campbell Hall additions

Two additions to Campbell Hall — home to the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture — are being dedicated today, more than two years after the project broke ground.

In the close to 40 years since Campbell opened, the number of students enrolled in UVa’s architecture programs has more than doubled. And at the same time the faculty has close to tripled, making space tight, officials said.

At a cost of $15.6 million, the additions have added 12,000 square feet of space, including 26 new faculty offices and three additional review rooms where students can have their work critiqued.

“The building is meant to exhibit what we do in the school,” W.G. Clark, UVa professor of architecture, said of the design of the east wing, which is almost completely encased on three sides by clear and translucent glass.

Two university professors were involved in designing the additions to the east and south ends of Campbell, which

before the additions topped out at 80,000 square feet.

Clark designed the east wing and said the review rooms it houses trump the former review rooms that lacked natural light.

“People don’t feel so trapped in there,” Clark said of the new rooms. In addition, the design sought “to make that [review] process more visible to the campus community.”

William Sherman, an associate professor of architecture, designed the south-facing facade with computer-controlled louvered windows. Those windows adjust during the day and through each season to help control the temperature of the building.

The windows are also designed so they can be retrofitted with photovoltaic panels that capture sunlight to use as energy for Campbell, Sherman said.

Officials decided to wait to install the panels because of budget considerations and rapid advances in photovoltaic technology.

The slate that covers much of the south wing’s facade was quarried in Buckingham County.

Below the south facade there are two outdoor classrooms built into an area previously below ground. Sherman’s design also moves faculty offices off the first and second floors and closer to the students in studios on the third and fourth floors.

In the south wing there is a slender window designed into one the walls that acts as a sundial, casting light into an open stairwell.

“The idea is to be far more conscious of where the sun is,” Sherman said of the slice of sun that students are already marking as it tracks around the stairwell.

With the new additions comes landscaping outside Campbell Hall that was designed by Warren Byrd, professor emeritus, to combat erosion. Also, a café inside was remodeled, in part using recycled materials, based on a design by associate professor Judith Kinnard.

Karen Van Lengen, dean of the architecture school, said it made sense to have the additions designed in-house because the faculty knew what the school needed.

In the past, having faculty design projects on-campus has been subject to conflict-of-interest concerns because faculty members are state employees, Lengen said. But she hopes that will change in the future for smaller projects around Grounds.

“There are many more things to do,” Lengen said. “We’ve started a process that I hope will continue well into the future.”

Roughly 500 donors contributed to the additions, with gifts totaling more than $7 million. The additions will be dedicated at 11:30 a.m. today.