The University of Virginia’s Alderman Quad is one of the most important public green spaces on the Charlottesville campus. The new, ADA-compliant Quad is actually a green roof built over the Special Collections Library. The below-grade library is visible only by ground level skylights integrated within planting beds.

Oehme van Sweden’s landscape design, which sits adjacent to the Jeffersonian architecture of the Lawn and faces the Beaux Arts facades of the Alderman Library and the McIntyre School of Commerce, responds to the historically sensitive nature of the campus meeting place. According to University Librarian Karin Wittenborg, “Thomas Jefferson would appreciate this new building and campus space . . . It has a life all of its own.”