CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) – This fall, one of UVA’s newest buildings will be inaugurated, but for the past several months, it has been open to both the university community and broader Charlottesville community.
On Central Grounds, the building sticks out with its modern style and open design. The project took nearly a decade, and started with the idea to make a building without a specific subject area in mind.
Now, the building by the pond is not a science building, or a history building, but an oasis that is home to all, from laboratories for innovation to yoga classes for first years.
“A student [said] that whenever she goes to the building, she thought she always feel like she’s being held like the building is holding her,” project principal Kent Chiang said. “And I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful, cool way to think about the building.”
Contemplative Commons was designed by Chiang and a team of other architects with Aidlin Darling Design, a San Francisco based design firm. Chiang was one of three principals on the project along with Joshua Allen and Russell Cole. However, since 2016, many minds and hands went into it. Including, Chiang said, landscape architect Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz and Joe Celentano, Lauren Shumate, Mert Kansu of VMDO Architects.
With the fall semester now in full swing, the building and its courtyard are usually decently filled with students and faculty studying or relaxing. Chiang said the space is biophilic in design, pulling inspiration from the mountains around it and pond right next door.
“We really wanted to create a building where people can thrive in which is essentially the mission of this whole entire enterprise. It’s this idea of how to create human resiliency, right,” Chiang said. “I think there are a lot of people who are terribly stressed out by the world.”
In a practical way, Chiang said, the building can be anything you, or the next person, want it to be.
“In a way, it’s it’s a laboratory for anything. It’s really trying to be as non specific and specific at the same time,” Chiang said. “The idea with that is that any teacher instructor can do anything they could think of in any of the rooms.”
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