[Note #4] ‘Taste’ and ‘Fit,’ Yesterday and Today

Culturally embedded opinions of good or bad ‘taste’ have always cycled around Brooks Hall.[1] I think there is a largely appreciative mode today, as the new Commons (former exhibition hall) invites wider public uses and the bold architectural diversity is welcome.

But to some, Brooks is still the building that ‘doesn’t fit.’ There is little substance to this. In 1876, Brooks was positioned to align directly with Washington Hall and the Rotunda Annex that burned down in 1895. It fit. The Gothic Chapel opened in 1890. The alignment of Brooks Hall, the Rotunda and the Chapel created a powerful visual metaphor for the dialectic between religion and science ever present in western thought. Brooks Hall fits. Prior to the early 20th century, the canonization of Jefferson’s neo-Classical architecture had not yet begun at UVa.[2] Like them or not, the late nineteenth century buildings fit in the landscape and demand our attention today more than ever.

From Professor Hantman

[1] See Pierre Bourdieu, 1984, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [2] Richard Guy Wilson, editor, The Academical Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.