Glavé & Holmes collaborated with Sweet Briar College to create a lively and comfortable space for students, faculty, and alumni to gather for both social and academic purposes. The design team created a classic and serene space with high performing finishes. Indoor/outdoor area rugs protect a seamless patchwork of old-and-reproduced historic wood flooring. Approximately one-third of the seating was salvaged and reupholstered from across campus to align with the college’s environmental values. The new furnishings are residential-feeling and were selected to feel cozy and residential. The design evokes a sense of an elevated “living room” where students can meet with classmates to study, enjoy an afternoon of visiting with friends or parents, or discuss an upcoming exam with a professor.

Saint Gertrude High School (SGHS) is an all-girls school division of the Benedictine Schools of Richmond. SGHS desired to relocate to the 50-acre Benedictine Abbey campus, shared with Benedictine College Preparatory. Glavé & Holmes Architecture designed a new academic building to support an enrollment of 280 students. The building sits on a bluff, seventy feet above the James River Valley. It is prominently visible by cars driving northound across the Veterans Bridge above the James River. The new building includes a Chapel, a Grand Hall for school gatherings, a Dining Hall with prep-kitchen, classrooms, labs, and administrative offices. A modernized Spanish Mission style architecture was used, incorporating architectural elements of SGHS’s existing building. The new building completed construction in spring 2023.