WE'RE ALL guilty of jargon from time to time, of speaking in the tongues of our trades and letting clarity fall by the wayside. Opinion columnists certainly aren't guiltless, so bear with me if the following sounds a bit hypocritical.
But honestly, "apologetic neo-Jeffersonian appliqué?" Gesundheit.
There's an important debate being had about one of the most fundamental aspects of our University, about how we choose to represent Thomas Jefferson's ideals in the 21st Century, and about how the place we make our home will look when we return to it some day with our own children. Disappointingly, however, this debate has been playing out on The Cavalier Daily editorial pages rather than our lecture halls; in touchy accusations and defensive responses instead of reasoned discussion; and, perhaps worst of all, in language well above the heads of most of the community.
Early last week saw a follow-up article to a response letter to an open letter issued by a number of faculty members of the Architecture School. If the whole "he said, she said" sequence of events isn't already overwhelming, consider the content of the argument itself. The original open letter, which ran Sept. 7 in The Cavalier Daily, lambasted the University for "commissioning mediocre architecture," and demanded to know if "UVA [is] to become a theme park of nostalgia at the service of the University's branding."
Not to be outdone, a collection of architecture experts from all corners of the country and as far away as Australia fired back with an open letter of their own two weeks ago, accusing "the modernist architectural establishment," of which we are to infer the faculty authors are part, of "taking secluded refuge in the academy, while all around them a groundswell of support for traditional architecture and urbanism has been rising." To which the faculty responded in interviews that the critics of their criticism were misconstruing their critique. And in the time elapsed between the first missive and the rebuttal to the rebuttal, no fewer than 20 letters to the editor were exchanged between students, faculty and alumni of the Architecture School on both sides of the apparent divide. If the University of Virginia did devolve into a Jeffersonian theme park, they could model a heck of a roller coaster after the head-spinning course of this debate.
Meanwhile, the exact nature of this divide continues to elude the architectural neophytes that comprise the majority of this community. The original signatories of the first open letter claim that calling them modernists is unfair, and that they are merely trying to point out the substandard nature of recent architecture around Grounds. But although we may not be inspired by the colonnades at Scott Stadium, or the new John Paul Jones Arena, there is still comfort in familiarity for many of us. By contrast, the world of the Architecture School can seem intimidating. It should, of course -- it houses brilliant faculty and talented students that work harder than anyone else at the University, and a hallmark of being on the cutting edge of art is befuddling the masses.
Take, for example, the unveiling of the Campbell Hall outdoor classroom addition -- formally known as "the Eric Goodwin Passage" -- in the fall of last year, which was met with a collective "huh?" from the University community outside of the Architecture School. No doubt the project represented an original and exciting use of space, but to the average pair of eyes, the structure looked more or less like an enormous representation of a medieval torture device.There is a lag, as there is in all art forms, before public tastes catch up to innovation in architecture, and the rest of the community at Mr. Jefferson's University might be forgiven for our reluctance to hand the appearance of our home as we know it over to the mind of the avant-garde. From the discussions and letters to the editor, it would certainly seem that this is far from the intention of the Architecture School faculty, but it is impossible to discern, as we laymen try vainly to follow the volley of debate between the two camps.
Over and over in these letters, the theme of what Thomas Jefferson would want is invoked. Perhaps the one thing that we can guarantee would be true to Jefferson's legacy would be to bring the spirit of this debate to every student, regardless of major or discipline; the great devotee of architecture would doubtlessly have loved the idea of the entire community discussing the meanings of the buildings that house our academic and extracurricular joys, sorrows, and growth. It's time to move the conversation out of the black and white pages of The Cavalier Daily and into the living color of Mr. Jefferson's University in 2005.
Katie Cristol's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kcristol@cavalierdaily.com.
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