Designing the Academical Village: Thomas Jefferson’s Drawings for UVA

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The Academical Village at the University of Virginia is one of the most important architectural designs in early America and, together with Monticello, is rightly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, we often think of this design complex as a project that sprung whole cloth from the mind of Jefferson, like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Yet a close examination of Jefferson’s drawings reveals an exciting process of trial and error and changes in course by Jefferson over the many years he spent designing UVA. Join us for an engaging look at these rare drawings revealed by Louis Nelson, Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture, and Associate Provost for Academic Outreach, Office of the Provost.

Louis P. Nelson, Professor of Architectural History, School of Architecture; Vice Provost for Academic Outreach, Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost

Louis P. Nelson is Professor of Architectural History and the Vice Provost for Academic Outreach. He is a specialist in the built environments of the early modern Atlantic world, with published work on the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Nelson is an accomplished scholar, with seven books to his name. These include two book-length monographs published by UNC and Yale University Presses, five edited collections of essays, two terms as senior co-editor of —the leading English language venue for scholarship on vernacular architecture--and more than 50 articles, essays, and book reviews.

He is also a celebrated teacher, having won a university-wide teaching award in 2007 and serving as the 2008 UVA nominee for a state-wide Outstanding Faculty Award. Nelson's teaching and research focus on the close examination of evidence-both material and textual-as a means of interrogating the ways architecture shapes the human experience. His most recent monograph, Architecture and Empire in Jamaica (Yale, 2016) won three major book awards and was very positively reviewed in twelve different venues from popular—Times Literary Supplement—to scholarly—William and Mary Quarterly, Art Bulletin, and Architectural History, among others.

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