Lamplighter Campus

Lamplighter School Campus
Marlon Blackwell Architects
Dallas, TX
DMD Copper
2018-22

Originally designed by O’Neil Ford in the late 1960s, The Lamplighter School enjoys a rich architectural heritage. The campus boasts open learning spaces, close relationships with nature, and a “village” composition developed from the original O’Neil Ford plan. Marlon Blackwell Architects designed the school’s new Innovation Lab building with a charged context on the northern Dallas campus of the Lamplighter School.

Dissimilar was brought into the project to provide copper cladding systems for the exterior building facades. The architects opted for a “raw” copper facade, meaning that the material was installed with no preweathered patina. This has given students the opportunity to watch the metal quickly oxidize, turning from a bright golden copper tone into the dark tones pictured below. Over the next decades, this patina will eventually settle into a bright green surface.

In total three buildings have been completed using Dissimilar Metal Design’s expertise. The Innovation Center was completed first, followed by the Admin / Campus entry and the Drama Buildings. The buildings are each clad in raw copper engineered and fabricated by Dissimilar Metal Design.