belvedere

Program New Civic Core, including Town Hall (multifunctional performance and meeting hall), Retail (restaurant, café, post office, artisan studios), and Montessori school
Area 21,000 sf
Status Construction scheduled to start 2008
Project Team
Landscape Architect Siteworks Studio
Engineer Staengl Engineering

For this competition-winning scheme, Hays + Ewing and landscape designers Siteworks imagined a civic place that could become a true “belvedere” -- the literal Italian translation of “beautiful view”: a place that harmonizes with the landscape and provides views and prospects to the surrounding landscape, a place where indoor space flows into outdoor space. Building on this concept, the design became as much about landscape as about buildings, with a series of structures organized around and defined by a wooded courtyard.

In September of 2006, the development group Stonehaus and the Charlottesville Community Design Center held a competition to design the civic core of a 700-unit New Urbanist community planned for Charlottesville, Virginia. The competition sought models of neighborhood-centered, mixed-use development that demonstrated green development principles while increasing understanding of how a civic center contributes to the experience of a neighborhood.

Hays + Ewing and Siteworks proposed an iconic structure that could become a unique and powerful presence for the community -- a “Great Hall” sitting on a plateau that overlooks the greenway. Filled with dappled light like an orangerie or greenhouse, this pavilion serves as a functional and architectural anchor for an adjacent wooded courtyard, and its inherent flexibility allows year-round use as an open-air pavilion -- weather permitting -- or a gathering place whose large glass panels provide shelter from inclement weather. This optimal versatility enables its use for large and small gatherings, indoor and outdoor concerts, movies, art exhibits, conferencing, classes and camp activities, weddings, and worship.

Complementary commercial components including a post office, restaurant, café, wine shop and a Montessori school attract residents during the day and theater patrons at night. The adjacent wooded courtyard provides a destination for daily strolls and outdoor dining and complements this vital public space where kids play, parents relax, and neighbors meet.