The Gathering House is a pavilion and a new educational conference center for visitor orientation and assembly on the grounds of the Menokin Foundation in the Tidewater region of Virginia. It is designed to support the educational goals and the steadily increasing number of visitors and scholars that travel to Foundation grounds to learn about the former plantation at Menokin and observe the conservation and construction work on the Glass House Project.  This new building is dedicated to public events and allows the foundation to increase the number of symposia and other events that it hosts on its grounds without disrupting the operations and administrative functions of the Foundation in the current visitors’ center building.  The large conference room in the current visitors’ center, vacated after the public program relocation, can then be re-purposed as much needed exhibition space.

The construction of the Gathering House has an educational component since it will serve as a demonstration of the advanced technology of Mass Timber.  Menokin has positioned itself as a center of Building Technology and Building Arts to showcase, not only state of the art conservation techniques, but also new construction systems and techniques. The use of large Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels as the building’s primary structure is in alignment with the Foundations approach to sustainability.  CLT is a cost and time efficient system that relies on prefabrication so that the building can be quickly assembled on site and put into use.  Wood production is an active industry in the region of northeast Virginia and the project can rely on local producers for raw and milled wood materials.  Both form and design of the building draw on the local vernacular typologies to relate it to the agricultural setting in open wheat fields where it is sited.

The Gathering House is the second component in a masterplan developed by REID architecture PLLC for the Menokin Foundation that has been already been designed and implemented.  The masterplan’s goals are to advance the visitor programs and expand the Foundation‘s educational facilities in order to invigorate support the Glass House Project, which is continuing to stabilize and enclose of the existing 18th century house.