West Main Street is the primary link between the University of Virginia and Charlottesville’s downtown. This mixed-use infill project houses fifty-five dwelling units, and includes affordable units in keeping with the City of Charlottesville’s affordable housing initiatives.
A collaboration of Bushman Dreyfus Architects and the project’s Design Director Ivy Naté, Six Hundred West Main creates a number of beneficial urban side effects. Urban space is made where none existed before. Historic character-defining structures are preserved and restored, one with a locally-famous business inside. The new structure steps back to maintain the street’s access to daylight and sky. The massing works to extend the character of the east end of this eclectic street–an attractive mix of low and medium-scale structures.
The team’s approach to the design of the facade is disciplined, and pays careful attention to the proportions of the various components, mixing compatible colors, textures, and materials to maintain and extend the rhythms and textures of the existing streetscape.
Six Hundred puts its residents in the heart of the city, with the historic pedestrian mall and the University of Virginia within walking distance of the building. In the past the middle section of Main Street has felt more like a divider than a connector, but this is changing with new development and revitalization. Six Hundred West Main helps knit the two ends together by infilling a gap in the street wall, adding and renovating 3 retail spaces, increasing pedestrian traffic, and bringing residents down to the street. The new uses, materials and architecture are in keeping with the historically eclectic area, which includes many building types and uses from residential to industrial.
The project incorporates a new mural by internationally acclaimed South African artist Faith XLVII that speaks to issues of local and national significance. Three large structures of weathering steel mark the three entrances along West Main Street: to the residential lobby, to the courtyard, and finally as frame and threshold to the new retail space.
The pattern created on the exterior facades by the metal panels and screens is carefully designed to act as a backdrop to the more complex shapes of the historic buildings in front. The facades have a look of sliding panels that allow the windows of the apartments to stagger, creating a façade background pattern that does not call attention to itself.
The concierge office’s blackened steel cladding is a collaboration between the design team and a local artisan. Hand-burnished steel plate panels, exposed hardware, simple parged walls, concrete floors, and steel mesh drapery extend the aesthetic of the building exterior to the interior design, giving spaces the honest feeling of a working studio. The Gallery has museum-quality track and floor lighting to properly illuminate changing exhibits. Each of the residential corridors of the building’s six floors has also been carefully curated with rotating works of art.
The dwelling units are modern and thoughtfully laid out in a variety of types and sizes, each with generous natural light and views.A courtyard, made by agreement between old and new architectural elements, frames a view of the historic First Baptist Church, built in 1883.
Elements of the scenario: art, threshold sensitivity, and texture.
Team:
Ivy NatéDesign Director, Interior Design, Art Curation)
Milestone Partners (Owner’s Representative)
W.M. Jordan (General Contractor)
Pray Design Associates (Landscape Architect)
Dunbar, Milby, Williams, Pittman & Vaughn (Structural Engineer)
Staengl Engineering (MEP Engineer)
Timmons Group (Civil Engineer)
Randy Burkett Lighting Design (Lighting Design)
Charlottesville Mural Project (Mural Facilitation)
Virginia Hamrick Photography (Photography)
Material Used:
1. Facade cladding:
Flush metal wall panels, FW Series, Imetco
EIFS/Stucco, Rollershield Drainage EIFS, Masterwall
pre-weathered corten panels, Facade-Tek
2. Flooring:
Luxury Vinyl Tile, CorkCore, Expanko
Exposed structural concrete
3. Doors: All glass doors, AGA Door, Virginia Glass Products Inc.
Terrace doors, Series D200, Efco
Multi-paned exterior sliding doors, Lift slide, Solar Innovations
Custom garage door, perforated metal/steel frame, w/FAAC door operator
4. Windows:
Storefront, 403T, Efco
Aluminum windows, Modern Series, Quaker
5. Roofing: TPO, Sure-Weld, Carlisle Syntec
