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Over the eighteen months spent on the UVa South Lawn project many things became apparent, others not so much. That the project is terminally FUBAR became most apparent. Whether the culprit is sloth or ignorance is yet to be determined. One should not entirely rule out malicious intent. Perhaps recognizing the deleterious state of the economy a fore thinking superintendent or architect designed the project to be a disgusting failure with the intention of redoing it all again in a few years - a job security detail drawn on a 100 million dollar scale. That would require a certain genius, thus let's focus on the sloth and ignorance as the guiding principles.
Where to begin.... a bird's ass view of the project immediately recognizes the omnipresent 2000 era architectural detail - The Green Roof. Greening campuses has become a national trend and college ranking metric; the South Lawn Project proudly boasts green roofs on both of its main buildings.
Green roofs are a challenge, not to be entered upon by amateurs. Rouss Hall's recent green roof addition has been leaking since the day it opened.* Several years ago. It's not that it cannot be done. Gently put most architects around here are not builders and across the board they have a poor concept of what works in the lovely place we share called reality.
Indeed, as pencil pushers it seems they have a distant concept of manual labor, or how else do they envision maintaining these poorly hung gardens in Babylon? Access to these soon to be brown scourges is only possible through an approximately 24"x 24" hatch up a 12 foot vertical ladder. I know and have worked beside dozens of gardeners who work at UVa. Across the board they are exceptionally talented and hardworking - maintaining the lovely folly gardens surrounding the UVa Lawn - a national monument and international heritage site. Asking them to haul their tools up a ladder, through a tiny hatch, and on to a "Green Area" 50 feet in the air with no guard rails is probably illegal. At the very least it's ignorant.
So for Volume 1 on South Lawn we'll put a point up for ignorance. From an architectural firm that goes by Moore Ruble.... too many puns to start with... is it really "More rubble?" would a few "More Rubles" have bought a better plan? Jeezy Peezy, who would ever name themselves that??? Who would hire them??? Barton Malow must be somewhere in the mix... I mean, they're the one's who claim to be building and polishing this turd.... ultimately full credit goes to UVa Facilities Management... a team of "management" bobo's like few others on grounds, and by management I presume golf-clubbing, good-ole-boy schmucking, secretary doing all the work kind of "managers...."
I wonder whether Princeton Review requires green space to be green, or if brown is "the new green." Frankly this whole area (with the possible exception of the Albemarle County building, where a verdant green roof does appear to exist) suffers from suck style development, especially the farcical brown-green roof on our Charlottesville city hall... ask anyone with a top level view... the only thing green about it is the dineros spent making it into the suck that it is.
Above - the Albemarle County building green roof... rumored to still be green...
Above - the Charlottesville City Hall roof.... known to be almost entirely brown now...*note on the link it says "completed," by which they must mean "We gave it the old college try, now time for a fundraiser to fix our preliminary fuckups" - perhaps that's why their "gallery section" is simply a picture with a brownish greenish mess on top.... Nice work Barnes Vanze
