Charles Wright Academy is about to reach a major milestone in the Boundless Expression campaign to build a new Language and Performing Arts Center.  Yesterday the school received the 99th alumni gift which came from Patrick Philley, a 2008 graduate, which means that the very next alum to give will be donor #100.  Both the capital campaign and construction are progressing right on schedule.  Read the rest of this entry »

The West Wing of Charles Wright’s Upper School came tumbling down yesterday. Construction crews sliced through the building, right across the room most recently used as the English department’s office. To the west of that cut, they demolished in just a few hours the four smallest classrooms on campus and three tiny offices. The choir director’s office, English chair’s office, and study hall/music room/theater will saved, although their uses will change once construction of the new Language and Performing Arts Center is complete.

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Tacoma-based Rushforth Construction set up camp at Charles Wright this week.  The firm built CWA’s Lower School and now they’re starting work on the new Language and Performing Arts Center.  Work is well underway as crews prepare for demolition of the West Wing on June 27.  The most notable changes on campus so far are the disappearance of the old drama shack, installation of the construction office trailer, and arrival of a giant dumpster and a tall fence encircling the site.

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Students and teachers at Charles Wright celebrated groundbreaking for the new Language and Performing Arts Center yesterday in a very big way, complete with dancing monsters and an excavator. 

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BCRA, the Tacoma-based architecture firm that designed the Lower School a few years ago, is now designing the new Language and Performing Arts Center for Charles Wright. The architects have produced an animated study model of the building. It’s your first chance to fly around the building and get a real feel for how this project will transform the campus. Click here to watch the video online in high quality or low quality.

BCRA, the Tacoma architecture firm that designed Charles Wright’s Lower School, is working on the new Language and Performing Arts Center too. In consultation with CWA administrators and the faculty members who will teach in the new building, they’ve prepared these floorplans. In the coming weeks we’ll explain in much greater detail how each of these spaces will support our drama, music, and language programs.

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Today our campus provides facilities that beautifully support the work of our teachers, coaches and students in almost every way. We have tools to inspire and challenge students in almost every discipline, except the language and performing arts. Here, our facilities greatly limit what can be taught and what can be learned, and teachers often design their courses around the space they have rather than the students they teach.

The new Language and Performing Arts Center will complete the Charles Wright campus. In this new space, what we teach and how we teach it won’t change, but the opportunities for students to use their new-found skills will change dramatically.

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