The OU Eco-Sooners received an award at the final competition of the 2023 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge. The team of Gibbs students won the Best Name of the Year award for their well-selected team name. According to the judges, the name strongly reflected the team’s design ideas and innovative strategies.
The Eco-Sooners' Best Name of the Year award certificate.
As first-time participants, the Eco-Sooners received wonderful feedback on their design. The judges highlighted their excellent integration of net-zero strategies into a preserved building, as well as their water harvest system and resilience ideas in the event of a tornado.
According to Dr. Negar Matin, a professor of Interior Design and faculty leader of the Eco-Sooners, “We moved one step closer to our mission of providing true net-zero affordable housing for Oklahoma City residents. Our journey has just begun.”
Congratulations to the OU Eco-Sooners for winning this well-deserved award!
View the video below to learn more about the Eco-Sooners' design.
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.
