ArtEDGE, a collaborative program involving the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, OU Libraries, and the College of Architecture’s Interior Design Division, has unfolded throughout the Fall of 2017. This unique program will bring 50 seventh and eighth grade students from Norman Public Schools to the OU campus in order to interact with each of the three participating departments.
During the first portion of the program, students learn about the history, purpose and inspiration behind the architectural design of the various parts of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. The students then analyze and interpret an artwork in the museum as inspiration for their design project. Using observation skills, language, and sketching exercises, the students develop a story and a place inspired by the artwork. This fall, the focal work is Two Figures, a large abstract bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth.
The students then move to The EDGE in the Bizzell Memorial Library, where they interact with the sculpture and create and manipulate a virtual model of the architectural place they are designing. They additionally receive 3D-printed models of the sculpture that will be used in the collaboratively designed place, created and presented with an architectural model.
The final stage of each ArtEDGE visit takes place in a studio at the College of Architecture. The students unite their individually-developed designs into one finalized architectural place, inspired and inhabited by their 3D-printed sculpture of Two Figures. The students’ sketches and final models will be on display in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art’s Education Gallery during Spring 2017.
For more information about the ArtEDGE program, contact Elizabeth Pober (epober@ou.edu).
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture professor and Institute for Quality Communities Director Dr. Amber N. Wiley’s book, Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital, has received two major honors from the Urban History Association.
Research initiated by Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture alumna Naila Hasan during her master’s studies at the University of Oklahoma has continued through faculty collaboration and resulted in a peer-reviewed publication in HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal.
Gibbs College of Architecture is pleased to announce Esther Thorp, Tyler Boydstun and Chukwuma Nwokoye as the winners of the 2026 Construction Innovation Translation Hub (CIThub) Student Ideas Competition.
