The Menokin
The Exhibition & Conservation Center
In the 18th century the Menokin site became the plantation home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The Georgian mansion, built for Lee and his wife in 1769, has been vacant and slowly deteriorating since 1960, and is currently unstable with over 80% of its original material in a state of collapse.
The Menokin Foundation aspires to approach the conservation and interpretation of the house in a truly innovative and revolutionary way. Their philosophy is to stabilize and exhibit the historic fabric that remains, while giving the public a unique understanding of the irreplaceable portions of the artifact, and by representing them with a completely different material; glass. The Foundation selected an interdisciplinary group of respected professionals led by Machado Silvetti to address this challenge.
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Client: The Menokin Foundation
Location: Warsaw, VA
Year: 2011-Present
Status: Construction in Progress
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Unbuilt> On the Boards: Best of Design | Architect's Newspaper | 2016
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Lewis, Michael J.. “Neither Ruin nor Replica: The restoration of Virginia’s Menokin plantation house takes a sophisticated, ambitious approach to historic preservation.” The Wall Street Journal. October 28, 2020.
Reid, Robert L. "Historic House Restoration Will Feature Stabilization and New Glass Structure." Civil Engineering 86, no. 12 (2016): 31-33.
"Unbuilt> On the Boards: The Menokin Project." AN's Fourth Annual Best of Design Awards, (2016): 49.
Demirjian, Leah. "Machado and Silvetti to Encase Historic Menokin House in Glass." Architect. 2014. Architect.com. 19 Nov. 2014
Architect Staff. "Eight of the Most Anticipated Projects Anounced in 2014." Architect. 2014. Architect.com. 17 Dec. 2014
A Marriage of the “Old” & the “New”
Described by Wall Street Journal architectural critic Michael Lewis as, “the most fiercely ambitious historic restoration project in America today,” the project concept proposes to stabilize, preserve and interpret the Menokin House (a National Historic Landmark) and its ancillary buildings and landscape, while featuring the delicate marriage of the "old" and "new." This approach maintains the distinct characters of "old" and "new" and establishes a necessary synergetic relationship between the formal, environmental and structural interdependence between the two. At present, construction is underway on the stabilization of the existing building and fundraising is ongoing for the glass enclosure.
“This place is on its way to becoming an active and truly unique cultural and historical resource not only for its region, where it will join as a bright star in a constellation of significant sites, but surely for the nation and the world.”
— Jorge Silvetti, Founding Principal of Machado Silvetti
Related Media
The Architecture of Cultural Heritage
Interview
Neither Ruin nor Replica
Wall Street Journal