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Tarrant County Community College, Trinity River Campus (RadioShack Riverfront Campus)

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2005, HKS. 300 Trinity Campus Cir.

A block to the west of Heritage Park Plaza (FW3) is the expansive Trinity River Campus of Tarrant County Community College, built as the headquarters of RadioShack Corporation. The nearly one-million-square-foot complex, facing Trinity River, was constructed on a site previously occupied by the Ripley Arnold public housing project. RadioShack, an electronics company formed in Boston in 1921, was acquired in 1962 by Charles Tandy of Fort Worth, who merged it with his existing leather goods business. The thirty-one-acre site allowed Dallas architects HKS to plan the corporate campus horizontally rather than vertically (in contrast to the two towers previously occupied by Tandy Corporation, FW6). The southwest corner is anchored with a parking garage and a convex-curved office building. Five finger-like office buildings radiate out from this curve, one connected to it and the others freestanding. The fragmented structures resulted in small buildings facing river views and were designed to allow for flexibility in corporate operations. The complex incorporated the popular stylistic gestures of the early 2000s—floating, segmentally curved roofs, interlocking masonry and glass curtain wall assemblies, cylindrical entrance towers, cantilevered canopies, and prow-like building shapes. By the time the corporation occupied the complex, the RadioShack retail empire began to crumble. RadioShack sold the property in 2005, leased it back, and in 2008 assigned the lease to the Tarrant Community College, which began classes here in 2009.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Tarrant County Community College, Trinity River Campus (RadioShack Riverfront Campus)", [Fort Worth, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-FW4.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 201-202.

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