MONTICELLO ARTIST RESIDENCY
the legacy of Thomas Jefferson’s Estate
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.
