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The $129.8 million John Paul Jones Arena opened in late 2006, just in time for basketball season. With a program history that includes college basketball greats like Ralph Sampson, but also untapped potential, with few Final Four appearances or ACC titles despite a talent-rich recruiting base, the new arena has the potential, like many arenas, to help bolster the fortunes of the men's and women's teams playing there. "The first question we asked ourselves was, 'Can one design a home-court advantage?' And we set out to do just that," said Bob Moje, principal in charge for the 48-person VMDO Architects, whose past projects include a wide portfolio of award-winning university buildings and K-12 schools.

Despite being the largest arena in the state of Virginia, with a capacity of 15,219 for basketball, the building doesn't occupy a mammoth presence on the landscape. The architects set the lower bowl of the arena underground, allowing the building to rise less than ten feet (three meters) above grade, so its scale would not overwhelm the surrounding cluster of buildings.

At the same time, the arena maintains a quietly iconic presence, particularly through a sequence of 26 simple white columns made of precast concrete, each weighing over 10 tons, that recall Jeffersonian neo-classicism without crossing over into postmodern caricature. About 600,000 wood-molded Old Virginia bricks were used in construction, matching material used in the rest of the campus vernacular.

Large arenas have long experienced difficulty maintaining a connection with the outside. The architects successfully addressed this by introducing natural light into the concourse and even into the arena itself. That such a simple move seems so bold is a testament to just how sealed off from the outside this kind of architecture usually is.

Yet, considering how the use of daylighting in design has become increasingly prominent under the banner of "green" architecture, as well as in response to a host of studies indicating better human health and performance in naturally lit spaces, the time is overdue for indoor sports arenas to bring in just a little more sense of the outdoors. It makes one wonder: why not a glass-ensconced arena that acts like a giant winter garden, like Philip Johnson's Garden Grove Church?

For most fans, though, the top priority is an optimal spectator experience. As with professional basketball and college football, here the business of sport dictates that luxury boxes must occupy an ample part of the seating equation. But at John Paul Jones Arena, student seating was placed directly behind team benches, and there are 120 courtside floor seats in addition to 19 luxury seats. The interior seating design, for which partnering firm Ellerbe Becket was largely responsible, includes an upper deck instead of a tapered bowl, which helps keep fans on top of the action. The upper and lower bowl of the arena are curved on three sides and flat along the area of the front facade. There are also 150 flat-screen televisions in the three-level facility, 56 concession stands, and 45 bathrooms.

Basketball is only one of the functions that will take place at the arena. The sound system boasts a mammoth 125,000 watts, and the arena also includes an in-house recording studio for the production of arena events. There are also practice courts for both the men's and women's teams, training facilities, an academic center, dining hall, weight room and fitness center, and recreational facilities.

As a large-scale public building at one of America's most venerable universities, the University of Virginia's new arena also had to reflect the traditionally progressive civic values of its client. That translated into green building measures, including such landscape features as bio-filters to remove pollutants from stormwater runoff and swales to channel water through wetlands.

No doubt the college sports arms race will continue, eventually bringing arenas with even more daylight, or more striking facades, or even smoother integration into the surrounding landscape. But for now, John Paul Jones Arena stands among the premier college basketball arenas in America, particularly among those teams not sharing urban arenas with NBA teams. Perhaps most importantly of all, the arena fits seamlessly into the historic architectural fabric of a qunitessential American institution.

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Brian Libby is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance writer who has also published in Metropolis, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Architectural Record.

SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The concrete structure of the arena's seating is exposed in the main lobby. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel Daylight streams into the arena's concourse. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel John Paul Jones Arena. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel Arena floor plans. Image: VMDO Architects Arena section. Image: VMDO Architects The theme of exposed structure continues in the concourse gallery. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel Exterior, side, and rear overview of John Paul Jones Arena. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel Entry court and landscaping in front of John Paul Jones Arena. Photo: VMDO Architects / Prakash Patel   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.