As the nation's eleventh largest school district, Dallas Independent School District serves more than 160,000 students who come from homes where 58 different languages are spoken. Operating with a $1 billion dollar budget, DISD employs 18,613 employees including 10,000 teachers in 220 schools.
8 Nov 2000
The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded the Dallas Independent School District a $50,000 grant to support a design competition for the renovation and expansion of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
The grant is part of a $500,000 New Public Works Initiative sponsored by National Endowment for the Arts to help fund design competitions throughout the nation. In addition to the high school, other projects to be funded include public buildings, housing and landscape design.
According to Andrae Rhyne, principal, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the design prototype resulting from the competition would be a step toward the future expansion of the school. "Academically and artistically, we already offer a program which is emulated by schools throughout the nation. It would be ideal if we were able to redesign and expand this campus, which was built in 1922, and increase our offerings."
With a current enrollment of over 650 students in a structure designed for 400, the school could benefit from an increase in square footage as proposed in the project—from the current 129,000 to 200,000 square foot. The additional square footage would be allocated for a studio, performance, exhibition and storage space.
Redesign and expansion of the school, together with the planned Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, would create the eastern anchor of the Dallas Arts District, which now includes the Dallas Arts Museum, the Meyerson Symphony Center, Artists Square and the Crow Asian Art Gallery. "School and community would both benefit from this dynamic expanded schools and arts district," said Rhyne.
Competition advisor is Hal Box, and the 11-member jury includes architects Ron Skaggs, (AIA chairman, HKS Architects); George Miller, (Pei Cobb Freed & Partners), and Julie Eizenberg (Koning Eizenberg Architects).
The design winner will be named in the summer.