First-year students in Architecture Design I studio were recently hosted by Factory Obscura, an “Oklahoma City-based art collective creating immersive experiences that awaken wonder, build community, and make the world better.”
Students in Factory Obscura.
On Oct. 25, the students were met by Factory Obscura founders Kelsey Karper, Tammy Greenman, Hugh Meade, and Laurent Massenat, who discussed their creative processes, collaborative experiences, and how Factory Obscura came to be.
The students then entered the immersive space, the door of which is a giant ear, and moved through and sat in the rooms. They spent a lot of time sketching the different spaces and practicing their observational drawing skills.
Students explore one of the spaces in Factory Obscura.
“Factory Obscura is a 6,000 square foot immersive and collaborative art experience that uses color, textures, shape, and space to evoke the various emotions felt when listening to a mixtape,” said Haley Prestifilippo, one of the course instructors.
“They were asked to really think about the relationship between the design processes in each room and their own designs. The students had a fabulous time and learned a lot!”
Students sketching a space in Factory Obscura.
“Similarly, in Design I studio, students have been creating a few different series of box models exploring ways color, texture, shape, and space can evoke and intensify a specific emotion.” Prestifilippo continues, "it was an important and amazing opportunity for our students to experience this same idea on a human scale – the immersive spaces at Factory Obscura allowed our students to actually walk through the emotions they had been working with throughout the past few weeks."
Photos provided by Haley Prestifilippo.
Telesis, the Gibbs College of Architecture’s student journal, has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to support its next two issues, “Pause” (Volume IX) and “React” (Volume X).
Gibbs College of Architecture is pleased to announce that Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture and Design and director of the Institute for Quality Communities, has been named to the shortlist for the Museum of African American History (MAAH) Stone Book Award for her book, Model Schools in the Model City. The book was one of 14 titles selected from 158 eligible submissions for the 2026 award.
The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to announce the release of Telesis “Design_less,” the eighth volume of its student-led journal.
