Second-year Architecture students in Design Studio III are studying how experiential architecture is driven by many spatial qualities, including perception, movement and change.
In early October, the students visited ballet and modern dance studios within OU’s School of Dance. Students mapped the movements of the dancers gesturally using either live transmission drawing or blind contour drawing. Then, the students used notational mapping strategies to codify the movement of the dancers.
For the second part of the assignment, students visited and toured the Celtic Cross Equestrian Center. Afterwards, they spent time documenting the layout and programming of the stable through sketching and diagramming. Students were required to generate a series a of live transmission drawings of horse movement that captures the movement of horses as well as a series of blind contour drawings of actual horses, details of horses, and their habitats.
The goal of this assignment was to understand how humans and horses move within environments, while exercising sensitivity to spatial and physical relationships.
“Exploring these relationships should expose new ways to direct how and what an occupant will perceive, perceptions that evoke meaningful connections between movement, environment and inhabitants,” according to the assignment description.
By exploring human and horse movement, students are extending their language of design intention. This language will inform the decision-making process and the design of actual architectural space.
Before this assignment, the students recently designed insect habitats as a way to reimagine spaces beyond typical human dwellings. Check out the photo album here.
Photos provided by Prof. Ken Marold
Telesis, a journal produced by students in the University of Oklahoma Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, has earned first place in the 2026 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals for its seventh volume, “Unfold.” This marks the fourth time the publication has earned recognition for excellence in student architectural journalism. It shares the honor with student journals from Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Cal Poly.
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Thinh "Henry" Duong, a master's student in the Division of Interior Design, for earning first place in the 2026 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition.
Gibbs College of Architecture Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Director and Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) faculty member Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., recently published a new book, Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum.
