Our clients at 701 Water Street hosted a special event to celebrate the grand opening of their newly remodeled lobby space, showcasing a new resident artist. The party was also an occasion to recognize Habitat for Humanity’s Southwood Redevelopment and Habitat’s Capital Campaign. The building owners, together with Manchester Capital, graciously opened the doors to a lively mix of Charlottesvillians. As a result, the night was a wonderful example of the crossover between art, architecture, and the important work of community building.

Host and emcee Jeff Hall of Manchester Capital introduced Dan Rosensweig, local President of Habitat. The speakers shared the Southwood project as a model for community engagement, resident-driven planning and redevelopment without displacement. Dan used this work to bring attention to our community’s vital need for affordable housing. The central theme of Habitat’s vision is “a Greater Charlottesville Community where everyone can find a decent place to live.”

diverse project types, strong communities

brwarchitects is incredibly honored to be a part of the Southwood redevelopment team and to steer the initiative of resident-led design. We see the empowerment of the current individuals to direct the formation of their own neighborhoods as key to successful community building.

brw is also thankful to be a part of the 701 Water Street Lobby renovation. At the heart of the lobby are two small art galleries wings for public showing. We were thrilled to work with artist Anna Gilliam throughout the design process, and whose work you will see currently in the gallery spaces.

As a space of experience and refinement, special attention was placed to materials selection. It was a pleasure working with Anna on the custom terrazzo mix for the space’s new flooring as well selecting the oversized Italian tile used to clad the lobby’s wall. At certain points, the smooth Italian tile are stripped away to reveal a rougher stone surface behind. Accents of walnut highlight oversized thresholds between the rooms and round out a material palette meant to provide a warmth and calm to the new space. A baffled wood ceiling is introduced at the galleries and help compress the space and to focus more attention on the framed art walls.

As we worked in a building which punctuates the pedestrian mall, we envisioned a design reflecting its important location and transformed the entry into a vibrant, welcoming space for its multiple tenants. Indeed, we took inspiration from our immediate context by converting the original space into a series of interconnected rooms; the new layout is meant to mimic the experience of the exterior mall itself. The design intent is for the variety of spaces and tactile materials to draw the pedestrian in and through its spaces in an experiential way.

Newly transformed, the lobby now acts as an extension of the mall instead of its previous role as a termination point. In turn, we see the initiative of design to extend community and symbolize the same notions of ‘community building’ as we see on a much greater scale with Southwood.

restoring history on the downtown mall

brwarchitects’ renovation of one of the oldest buildings on Charlottesville’s historic Downtown Mall has become an attractive feature for locals and tourists alike. At the very beginning of this project, the exterior paint was stripped which revealed an attractive patina on the brick wall. In fact, this exterior paint was the main cause of the building’s extensive water damage throughout the years, and removing it created an immediate improvement in water infiltration.

As the exterior construction was underway, plans continued to change for the interior. The striking new façade led to many potential interested tenants, and interior plans evolved so that diverse groups could cohabit in the limited space. Fortunately, our client prioritized flexibility which allowed brwarchitects to solve the jigsaw puzzle of accommodating each tenant’s specific needs.

The result is a cooperative workshare office on the second floor which is specifically suited for startups. This space also has the potential to accommodate a live-in tenant if the need ever arises. Our local PBS station occupies the main floor as a multi-use office, event space, and exhibition space that also includes audio and visual staging for small-scale video and musical production.

Potentially most exciting for the average pedestrian is nestled in the north end of 3rd street: a world-class Patisserie Torres, the brainchild of Fleurie Chef and Owner Brian Helleburg with master baker Serge Torres. With only 700 square feet, we worked closely with the chefs to economize space and function of a working kitchen, while simultaneously creating a transparent space. From the exterior, a large picture window invites the public into the Patisserie. The result at 225 East Main Street contributes many different elements to downtown’s arts and food culture.

With a long history of having worked in historical contexts in Charlottesville and Central Virginia, brwarchitects was initially consulted to provide some architectural sensitivity support for MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) engineers for a local institutional client. This evolved into a series of supportive maintenance, upgrade, and planning activities over the following years while our client executed more prominent restoration projects.

Successful Strategic Reorganization

In any complex institution, the wide variety of organizational functions make facilities changes an involved procedure. We think of these as “domino projects” in which one change or upgrade to a facility leads to new and re-emerging organizational needs in other areas. In addition, our client’s many personnel were distributed among disparate buildings – a predicament that they had previously identified as a priority.

Along with executive leadership and facilities management, brwarchitects assisted in a series of studies to evaluate and plan organizational needs, constraints, and possibilities. With a complex client relationship like this one, it is more important to listen closely on an ongoing basis than to propose “solutions” early in the process. It is also critical to understand that the public-facing functions of an organization are as critical as the internal needs.

Our team helped maintain an ongoing framework based on criteria that our clients identified in early meetings. Principal Kurt Keesecker also utilized an oft-used visualization tool to make systems planning more comprehensible on a large scale. This allowed our client to make strategic decisions based on the resources involved, complexity of implementation, and organizational consequences.

Best Practices

Some of these guiding criteria are widely applicable to any commercial or institutional client. There should be quality executive space, and similar departmental staff should work close to each other. The final “campus” should facilitate interdepartmental collaboration and a sense of community, while also allowing for future migration or re-organization.

Another critical priority is that the process of moving and construction itself should be minimally disruptive to day-to-day work. We understand that staff cannot move instantaneously, and that work needs to continue day in and day out. Additionally, no group wants to move twice. We were able to successfully facilitate the reorganization of resources with the least amount of interruption.

Simultaneously to this planning work, brwarchitects continued to work on some singular renovations that came with their own set of challenges, as well as minor but important accessibility and maintenance work. The resulting facilities, though not all in their final state, are a marked upgrade for all staff and reflect the attentiveness and sensitivity that a local firm offers.

We’re pleased to see the important work at Southwood receive recognition in the national media. The resident-led redevelopment process is unique across the country. Where most communities in trailer parks are at high risk of displacement, the residents at Southwood not only have housing security, but have also become experts and advocates for their vision of the neighborhood.

“They set the vision,” Rosensweig said. “They actually learned and were trained in architecture, engineering and financing. Our goal was to stand back and support the residents as they made a plan of development.”

Reinforces partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville and commitment to expanding affordable housing in the County

On Wednesday night, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors unanimously endorsed an action plan for the redevelopment of the Southwood Mobile Home Park (Southwood). The action plan, now approved, authorizes the creation of multiple teams with the depth of knowledge and expertise to successfully implement the collaborative redevelopment project. With the endorsement comes $675,000 in funding to Habitat to provide the necessary support to continue development and submission of the Phase I, involving planning and project management, rezoning application and to match with ongoing grant applications. The funding will allow for the creation of documents and drawings leveraging significant public and private funds for architecture, engineering, and implementation.

Read the complete news story here. 

View more about this project.

“Libraries are the repositories not only of books, but of feelings. There’s the love of a good read, of course, but bookworms harbor other associations with libraries, too: discovery, solitude and the satisfaction of working hard. When architect Bruce Wardell and his colleagues were asked to design a library addition for a Charlottesville homeowner, they learned that their client wanted the new space to evoke just those kinds of emotions.”

Read full article here or view the project page.