Photo courtesy of Lorena Toffer
When a public elementary school in the La Esperanza neighborhood of Dallas was shut down, Dallas County partnered with UTA students and faculty to transform the space into a community center offering free services to address the community’s needs.
The center will feature various amenities, including a literacy center, health care services, child care services, a senior center, a women’s clinic and a Parkland Health hospital facility, according to Andrew Sommerman, District 2 Dallas County commissioner.
Sommerman said the community center should be open by the middle of next month, excluding the Parkland Health hospital facility, which will be implemented later.
“It’s great for the individuals who are receiving the services,” he said. “And it makes the place a much better place to live all the way around.”
The neighborhood has around 10,000 residents and is made up of a 72% Latinx community, which faces an economic disadvantage, according to an informational guide. Over a third of the people in the area make less than $30,000 a year as a family, according to Sommerman.
Lorena Toffer, UTA School of Architecture adjunct assistant professor, said she got involved with the La Esperanza Community Center because of her interest in projects that focus on social and environmental justice in historically disenfranchised communities. She was awarded the diversity achievement award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture this year for her work on the project.
“It offers that opportunity for students to have a direct connection to a community, and they get to see how an idea evolves, but then it has a real impact,” Toffer said. “They get to really see how the work of architecture can influence an area.”
UTA architecture students did extensive research to come up with floor plans and designs for the center. Architectural engineering junior Lizbeth Romo said that after working on this project, she knew it was a career she wanted to continue.
“It was an amazing experience to get this real-life experience of what this career is about,” Romo said. “Not only making functional buildings, but also to have some meaning and a purpose to help.”
She said her class researched the neighborhood for about six weeks to see what kind of services would be most beneficial to residents, highlighting safety, health and education. The students also proposed murals, green spaces and a bus stop to be implemented by the center.
“We first focused on their needs, and then we tried to make it as pretty as possible so they could also enjoy going there,” she said.
The process also involved collaboration with students from Richardson High School.
Laura Bellone, Career and Technical Education pathway for architecture teacher at Richardson High School, said the students enjoyed working on the project, especially since some of them are part of the La Esperanza community and have witnessed crime in the neighborhood.
“It was giving them a hub, a place to go, that they could feel safe and secure and still be part of their own community,” Bellone said. “They didn’t have to leave their neighborhood to get access to these things.”
Both UTA students and the high school students presented their work at Dallas City Hall. Toffer said throughout the process, the high school students taught the college students about programming and design, and the college students taught them about structural systems.
“It was just nice to see them all sitting together, discussing these issues, discussing architecture,” Bellone said. “It gave them that common bond.”
Romo said this was a special project to her, and she wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.
“I actually feel like I’m making some kind of change,” she said. “It really inspires me to keep doing it, to keep doing my best to help different people, that maybe architecture is not always about making something grand, but also meaningful.”
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