Located on Jefferson’s own estate, this new project is an exploration in the contemporaneity
of the historical perspectives and agency on the site. The project is activated through the
manipulation of the front facade and the resulting impact on the project. The front facade of
the new addition, that facing Monticello, appears as a monolithic and institutional project of
the same precedent language; it is rotated and broken, with an internal gold facade offset to
distinguish the activation of it on the interior.
The broken front facade causes the monolithic form to break into three wings, that rotate and
create interstitial spaces made from internal volumes that then open outwardly. These new facades
are projected images of a neoclassical facade, that creates misalignments an impressions of
misreadings of the context in their new exteriority. The back facade, wrapping around Mulberry
Row, appears as a collage of misconstrued volumes, both as material, and image, collapsed on
each other.
As the visitor transverses the site, and around Mulberry Row, one is granted a new plurality for the
site to be renegotiated in its highly politicized and controversial history. It is the occupant’s own
prerogative to discover and position themself to gain a new perspective of the site, allowing for
the possibility of a new reading of Monticello, without visually imposing on it or the landscape.
This project simultaneously reinforces the site and de-monumentalizes any singular perspective
on the site; the project seeks not to answer the totality of the site, but instead offer the potential
for discovery and new activism, both in the past and in the future for the site.
