Posted by David Hamilton on January 15th, 2010

The Piedmont Virginian is a lovely magazine focusing on history, culture and preservation of Virginia’s rural heritage.  It’s always a good read, especially when they do the occaisional feature on Bundoran Farm or someone we know in the Charlottesville area.  This winter, Thomas Randolph has begun a fascinating new feature callled Deep Background.  In each article, the author presents a painting of a Virginia scene, and an essay showing how much we can learn about a landscape, an historical period, a farm operation or an ecological community from just one image. 

In the first (Winter 2009) feature, a seemingly simple horse-barn scene is unfolded to explain, among other things: why barns are red, why a horse barn might have a silo, why a fence is painted green, and a number of other conclusions about the history of a Mellon family property in Hunt Country. 

This is a kind of parlor-game version of the exercise the design team did in Southern Albemarle County when we conceived the Bundoran Farm project.  Our version took about a year.  Studying this landscape, we tried to understand why a place like this looks the way it does.  Why it feels special to cycle or drive through this valley.  We looked at images like the one above and asked a lot of questions:

How do we know we’re “in the country?”  Why are farm roads so much more attractive than subdivision roads?   Why were they built this way?  What’s the visual difference between decorative fencing and working agricultural fencing?  How do you know where to go?  How do you know who owns this land?

I submit you can answer these questions and more, simply by considering the image above.  I personally have a list of  ten conclusions about Bundoran Farm, but would be delighted if a reader comes up with one I haven’t thought of.  I’ll post my list in a couple of days. 

 Or you could just drive by and say “isn’t that pretty?”  And know that this landscape became this way, and will stay this way, for a reason.  And that’s really the point.

Filed under: Agriculture, Architecture and Design, Education and Inspiration, General, Nature/Environment