Page Featured: Performing Arts Complex

The portfolio section of the July/August issue of Texas Architect magazine is dedicated to performing arts centers and features two Page projects: The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Academic Performing Arts Complex and the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center at Greenhill School in Dallas. Both projects introduce state-of-the-art arts facilities and are positioned to become central gathering and performance spaces for their respective local arts communities.

In the Valley, the new Performing Arts Complex replaces two existing 40-year-old buildings with a new facility and includes the renovation of two adjacent structures. The 94,000-square-foot complex includes a 1,000-seat performance hall which houses a range of music, dance and theatrical events and dedicated rehearsal spaces for Band, Orchestra, Choir and Mariachi/Jazz ensembles. The grand porch and lobby are oriented toward University Drive and downtown Edinburg at the southeast end of the campus, making this building a landmark gateway to the university from the city. The project extends the campus’s dominant vocabulary of thick brick walls with circular and arched openings. But it also introduces larger areas of glass and greater visual connectivity between indoors and outdoors as is appropriate for a public building that needs to welcome visitors and have its activities visible from the outside at night when most performances occur.

In Dallas, the new performing arts building is now the centerpiece of Greenhill School, a pre-K through 12 institution. Designed by the New York-based architecture firm WEISS/MANFREDI, the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center supports Greenhill's well-known arts program and provide its students even better opportunities to practice and perform within a college-level program. Page served as Associate Architect and also provided MEP/FP engineering for the facility. 

The pairing of the projects in the current issue of Texas Architect emphasizes the impact both arts centers are already having on their communities. 

To view the Texas Architect article on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Performing Arts Center, click here. 

To visit the Texas Architecture website, click here.