Architect Bob Moje’s Home for the Years Ahead
For nearly five decades, architect Bob Moje has helped shape places where people learn, gather, and grow. As a founding principal of VMDO Architects, he led monumental design projects at the University of Virginia and helped move schools away from factory-style corridors toward nurturing environments that support the whole student. “Children, especially at the ages we were designing for, are naturally wired to understand and explore their surroundings,” Moje says. “At that stage of development, the environment has a profound influence on how their brains grow and how they experience the world.”
The conviction that space shapes behavior and emotion guided his professional life and, more recently, his personal one. “One of the things the world hasn’t fully digested is the power of the environment on our overall existence,” he says. “People think about their cars, their clothes, their shoes, but they take the places they live in for granted. Those places have the power to set the tone for a happier, more meaningful life.”
Since retiring in 2020, Moje has turned that philosophy toward the redesign of his Charlottesville home, where he and his wife, Marie, have lived for the past 32 years. Over time, he has gradually renovated the home’s public spaces, including the kitchen, living room, dining room, and family room, while deliberately postponing the more personal areas. “I put myself last in almost all situations,” he says. “When I finally got around to doing something for myself, I called it my ‘place to die in.’ A friend corrected me, ‘No, call it a place to live in.’ So that’s what it has become: a joyful place to grow old and enjoy life.”
Delaying the project may have been a blessing, he explains. “All those years gave me time to think about it. I’ve been sketching ideas for decades.”
This final phase of the home’s renovation focused on the primary suite. A custom millwork core links bedroom and bath through clerestory openings, a skylight cuts a clean line overhead, and bespoke furniture including the bedframe, headboard, and nightstands creates a unified composition. Shoji screens diffuse the morning light, a meditation platform invites stillness, and the bedroom opens onto a newly designed patio with fresh plantings, mature trees, and carefully set stonework that deepens the home’s connection to nature. Additional renovations to the guest baths, sunroom, and exercise room complete the transformation, enhancing both the home’s function and its cohesive beauty.
Moje says that his appreciation for the natural world has deepened over time. He designed the suite to follow the sun’s seasonal path, aligning the room so that in winter the sunrise strikes the bathroom wall directly, while by midsummer it arcs almost 90 degrees across the space. The shifting light and shadows became a central element of the design.
Each day begins with quiet intention, as Moje awakens just as the first light filters into the room. He takes time to notice how it shifts across the walls and screens, a small ritual that reminds him to move through the day with awareness and gratitude.
The bath evokes an outdoor shower, but without the muddy mess of Albemarle’s red clay. Colorful glass windows scatter shifting bands of light across the tile. “Where the color lands changes every day,” he says. “You can’t help but be cheered up by that.”
For the finishing touches of his lengthy renovation project, Moje partnered with Dan Zimmerman, founder of Alloy Architecture & Construction. Together, they created calm, light-filled spaces that reflect Moje’s lifelong design sensibilities, his daily meditation practice, and deep connection to the natural world.
“Working with Bob was a pleasure because he brought both a strong design sensibility and a genuine openness to the process,” says Zimmerman. “Collaborating with another architect created an immediate shared language, which made the conversations easy and the experience especially rewarding.”
Moje describes their process as the “Italian method,” a concept he first learned while he and his UVA School of Architecture mentor Robert Vickery helped oversee the construction of a house being built by another UVA architecture professor, Mario di Valmarana. The approach allows design and construction to evolve together, favoring observation, adjustment, and collaboration over rigid schedules. It reflects a patience for getting things right and a willingness to revise when a better idea presents itself.
He recalls watching di Valmarana sketch directly with carpenters as they built. “Design is a lot like getting your eyes tested,” Moje says. “‘Is it better like this, or a little better like this?’ There’s no design that’s ever finished. There’s always a slightly better answer.”
That philosophy guided this project. The house’s low ceilings seemed inescapable until a field superintendent proposed flipping joists to extend the raised skylight volume through the bath. “It was a great example of how building and designing simultaneously can result in a much better outcome,” Moje says.
“Alloy helped translate Bob and Marie’s vision into a clear plan that balanced modern living with the character of the home,” says Zimmerman. “Successful partnerships start with clear communication, thoughtful listening, and a shared understanding of the project goals. With those pieces in place, trust builds easily and the design can evolve into something personal, functional, and well crafted.”
The partnership with the Alloy team affirmed what Moje has long believed: design is best done together. “Architecture didn’t start as a profession,” says Moje. “It began with master builders and craftsmen working side by side. When you’re carving stone for a cathedral, you depend on the mason’s artistry and judgment. That same respect applies today. The best builders are incredibly skilled, often knowing things I don’t, and the more you learn from them, the better the work becomes.”
If there’s a connection with the schools he designed and this personal retreat, it’s the belief that well-considered design can shape how we live and feel each day. The same patience and care he once brought to designing classrooms now guide the way he lives at home. “The creative process keeps you young,” Moje says. “This project will never truly be finished. People often ask if it’s done. Yes, we live in it, we enjoy it, but every day I notice something new, something else we could improve or change. There’s a unique beauty and deep fulfillment in a project that continues to evolve.”
Asked what he’d tell someone dreaming of a retirement retreat, Moje offers this advice. “Take your time and do it as well as you can. Build less and build it well,” he says. “Think deeply. You’ll never regret quality.”
Moje’s UVA Legacy
After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1976, Bob Moje co-founded VMDO Architects that same year with his mentor, UVA architecture professor Robert Vickery, and fellow students Lawson Drinkard and David Oakland. At VMDO, he played an integral role in designing some of the University’s most significant modern buildings. Here are two of his favorites.
Jefferson Scholars Foundation Graduate Center
A three-building complex organized around intimate courtyards to foster collaboration among top scholars from a range of disciplines, the Graduate Center is LEED-certified and features innovative stormwater management and sustainable, low impact building design.
“It’s one of the best things VMDO has ever been associated with,” says Moje. “The whole idea was to create a place where the best and brightest could mix across fields, because that’s where creativity often happens. And we worked hard to use UVA’s traditional materials in a more up-to-date way. ”
John Paul Jones Arena
JPJ balances its roles as an elite basketball arena, a top-tier concert venue, and a building that fits at UVA. By reducing the span of the roof structure and introducing an open architectural backdrop behind the stage, the design improves acoustics and preserves seating capacity for performances.
“The standard arena model has a big lower bowl and a symmetrical circle,” Moje says. “We ignored all of that and designed a U-shaped building to create better sightlines and a stronger sense of place. It feels like UVA, not just another arena.”