I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture." — Laurence Olivier
Teens in the award-winning architectural design program at Shadow Ridge High School made a field trip to the Rising Arts site to give the organization a much-needed boost in its startup process.
Scott Thomas (top right) leads his students in site planning for Rising Arts.Because the city required us to engage an architect toward the goal of obtaining a new certificate of occupancy for our theater (to report various technical specs), Phoenix architect Scott Thomas, who teaches architectural design at both Shadow Ridge and at Phoenix College, organized the activity as a community service project and to garner experience for his students.
After making the trek across the Valley from their west-side Dysart neighborhood to the east-side location of Rising Arts, they spent the morning measuring every feature of our building space and preparing to draft plans for the theater. This even included photographing various surfaces to map realistic textures on 3-D renderings of the place! The process was followed by more hours of work back on their campus to produce the necessary documents.
Shadow Ridge offers the only four-year program of study in architectural design drafting in the state as part of its Signature Architecture Program. (Through dual enrollment, the high schoolers earn college credit at the same time.) Scott's program at Shadow Ridge is also the 2011-2012 Arizona SkillsUSA State Championship Program in Architectural Design Drafting.
Rising Arts is very thankful for truly community-minded supporters like Scott Thomas and for the skills and talents of his future architects!
Scott's program web site: https://schoolweb.dysart.org/TeacherSites/tsite.aspx?id=1544
Shadow Ridge High School web site: https://schoolweb.dysart.org/SchoolSites/index.aspx?sid=225