The COLBY Building at Mountaintop Montessori Recognized with Merit Award by AIA Virginia

Thank you to the AIA Virginia and Jury for selection of The COLBY Building at Mountaintop Montessori for recognition in this year’s Design Excellence Awards.

The COLBY Building project is an addition and rehabilitation of the existing Mountaintop Montessori Middle School in Charlottesville, Virginia. Built in the 1940s, the building previously served as an events space, an American Legion, and a music school before being acquired by the School in 2008. Mountaintop Montessori originally began in a 19th century house nearby and maintains a beautiful wooded campus overlooking Charlottesville. The campus has grown organically over 40 years through inventive space utilization and with a sensitivity to its special site. The middle school project continues this tradition of resourcefulness and creative re-use — embodying the Montessori philosophy of invention and discovery. The program priorities included doubling classroom size, improving layout efficiency, adding flexibility and removing poorly constructed previous additions. 

The school sought a reinvented plan more conducive to Montessori practice with varied classroom sizes, a larger assembly space, clear circulation patterns, and dedicated breakout spaces. A permanent covered outdoor structure was also requested for replacing a temporary Covid gathering tent which had become a favorite gathering space. Stronger connections to the outdoors were encouraged as a key component of Montessori education. And while the existing house was outdated, its historic residential character was beloved by staff and students alike. Rather than erasing that quality, the design team drew inspiration from it, finding ways to thoughtfully integrate the old building into a contemporary architectural intervention.

"The Mountaintop Montessori Middle School Addition is a fine example of expanding a structure in as seamless a manner as possible. One would never know that the original building, constructed in 1941, and the recently completed addition were not designed at the same time. It stands as a testament to the exceptional quality of the design." - AIA Virginia Design Awards Jury

“This brilliantly subtle extension of an existing school building derives contemporary expression from the reinterpretation of the existing structure’s form and materiality. While maintaining continuity with the existing building, the addition deftly forms a range of interstitial and threshold spaces. The new entryway ingeniously occupies the joint between old and new, while blurring inside and out.” - AIA Virginia Design Awards Jury

We’d like to thank the Faculty & Staff at Mountaintop Montessori for their thoughtful collaboration in the project.