New Schools Need Better Architecture
It seems odd that a school district that is so imbued with the idea of Tradition in its high school should be so intent on destroying it in its elementary schools.
When residents voted in a bond election for new school buildings, they should not be surprised to discover that the school district is building them. But they are right to be surprised and offended at the mediocrity of the buildings being built.
Considering how ugly the towering new Dallas Country Club is compared to its low-slung, light-filled predecessor, the danger is always that the new will be contemptuous of the old.
We should be thankful that the family controlling Highland Park Village have been careful stewards in its updating.
[pullquote-left]“Beauty is not expensive but it is hard. The argument for practicality is made by people who don’t recognize beauty when they see it and certainly are incapable of creating it.”[/pullquote-left]
But committees – and with the school district, as with the country club, it is always committees – always seem to tilt to the lowest common denominator. Members see themselves more as accounting clerks than stewards.
Good taste and beauty, hallmarks of the generations who built the Park Cities and whose legacy the school district seems intent on ignoring, are regarded as mere ornamentation and not as the very soul of what makes our community the special place it is.
It is a deadening attitude toward life that is all the more pernicious for representing itself as practical. Beauty is not expensive but it is hard. The argument for practicality is made by people who don’t recognize beauty when they see it and certainly are incapable of creating it. Their argument only reveals a shriveled spirit and a blind eye.
The opponents are right. The school district should pause, reflect, and rethink. Fast.
yeah amazing how dumbed down everything is that comes out of the school board, etc. vis a vis design. have they never traveled?