Dallas College Richland, Red River Hall

Embracing a new era for the campus.

Dallas College’s Richland campus, which opened in 1972, was carefully designed to preserve the existing trees and lakes on what was once farmland in North Dallas, and make those natural features a part of the campus fabric. Its architecture, defined by simple but bold concrete forms framing planes of brick, is softened by the water and trees that flow around and under the buildings. As it has grown over the years, the campus has maintained that strong architectural identity and sense of place.

Corgan’s challenge was to design a new 98,500-square-foot School of Business and Classroom Building that fits within that context, reflects the simple elegance of its surroundings, but embraces advances in technology and its place as a work of architecture 50 years later.

Siting and orienting the building and was key, both in its forms and the negative space it frames. The building is a simple two-story “L” formed by a bar of instructional spaces to the north and a smaller block of largely administrative spaces to the south. A glassy collaborative space bridges the two forms and frames a new portal to the campus, defining its east edge.