A rendering of a forthcoming charter school designed by OMA in Houston’s East End neighborhood has been released. RDLR Architects, a local office, is the executive architect, and OMA the design architect.
The Frank Liu Jr. Academy of Music and Fine Arts (FLAMA) will be a tuition-free, open-enrollment, public charter school for pre-K through eighth grade students. There, students will have daily music and visual arts instruction embedded within the curriculum.
OMA is renovating a historic industrial structure to house FLAMA. The former Folgers Coffee Plant, built in the 1930s, will be repurposed for the charter school. The plant measures 255,000 square feet and rises three stories.
Folgers used the complex through the 1960s. Afterward other coffee companies set up operations on the campus. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
Today the Folgers Coffee Plant is owned by Lovett Commercial, the real estate company of Frank Liu, the school’s namesake. Liu died in 2022, at the age of 34. Liu’s family, and FLAMA’s board members, are now driving the school project.
OMA has been tasked with transforming the plant into a “learning landscape” to support FLAMA’s mission, that of making music and visual arts education accessible to everyone.
“Adapting a building is like revoicing an instrument—recalibrating what exists to sharpen inherited notes and enable new resonances,” OMA partner Jason Long said in a statement. “Our transformation of the historic Folgers plant selectively excavates and augments the existing structure to create a dynamic environment for children to learn, practice, and perform.”
The rendering shared by OMA shows the Folgers Coffee Plant’s brick envelope intact. A vibrant, polychromatic patio will be built on the exterior. OMA also designed a new ramp for accessibility purposes connected to the bus drop-off area.
This is now the second collaboration between Lovett and OMA: The first was Post Houston, a former U.S. post office that the pair converted into a mixed-use arts complex.
The University of Houston, Rice University, Houston Christian University, and the University of Houston – Downtown faculty members will help train educators at FLAMA.
A spokesperson for OMA told AN that “more design details and images in the coming months.”
FLAMA is anticipated to open in fall 2027.