VA COTE + USGBC Building Tour: The Edgar Shannon Library

(Photo Credits: Tim Hursley)

Join AIAVA COTE and USGBC for our 2026 building tour series! We wish to celebrate exciting and innovative sustainable building design around the Commonwealth. Each month we will focus on a project in one of the five AIA Virginia component areas that has achieved LEED or other sustainable certification. Tours will provide AIA and USGC CEU’s for participants.

Join us on June 17 to tour the LEED-Gold renovation of Shannon library. The renovation brought the building up to current standards of performance, safety, accessibility and service. It was essential to restore the library to the position it enjoyed when it first opened in 1938 — a contemporary library with modern amenities suited to the needs of its users. Scope includes a new 130,000-square-foot addition and renovation of 100,000 square feet of the historic building, encompassing open shelving for better access to the extensive holdings, study areas, reading rooms, staff work areas and spaces for scholarly research and preservation of books. The building offers a better layout and more natural light, including in two new study courts, for members of the University community as they study, research, and socialize. Historic fixtures, furniture and bookshelves were refinished and restored, with the lighting converted to LED. 75,000 gallon cisterns under Nameless field retain rainwater runoff, and over 120 tons of metal shelving was recycled. Aligning with UVA standards, there is no irrigation on-site. The project demonstrated over 40% energy cost savings from the baseline and prioritized low-emitting products and those with transparency in manufacturing and content. It is now ready to serve the University community for another century.

1 AIA LU | HSW 
1 GBCI LEED Specific BD+C and LEED Green Associate CE

AIA Member: $15
USGBC Member: $15
Non-Member: $30
Students: FREE

Register Here>>
*Registration closes at 12:00pm on 6/16