A gift to the University of Oklahoma will honor alumnus and esteemed architect Bob Faust by creating multiple new faculty and staff positions dedicated to the American School, an innovative design practice developed at OU in the 1950s and ’60s.
Sherry Faust, Bob Faust’s spouse, has made a multi-million-dollar planned gift in his honor to University Libraries and OU’s Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture. The gift will, through multiple avenues, support the American School Archive, a collection committed to preserving essential materials related to that architectural movement.
“Sherry Faust’s remarkable commitment to celebrating and building on the legacy of the American School will allow OU to remain the preeminent authority on this important movement,” said OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. “As OU continues to expand our capacity as a premier research institution, the Faust gift allows us to enhance that reputation in an area devoted to design, history and craft.”
The brainchild of university faculty like Bruce Goff, Herb Greene and more, the American School came to life at OU as an innovative architectural and design movement. The practice emphasizes drawing inspiration from the natural world, everyday surroundings and non-Western cultures, and it creates work organically tied to its surroundings.
Bob Faust, who died in late 2020, began his architecture studies at Tulane University but transferred to the University of Oklahoma to learn under Goff. He went on to work for Goff post-graduation and later taught at Iowa State University and Auburn University, where he balanced his time in the classroom with design projects of his own.
Robert L. Faust and His 3D Poster, Norman, Oklahoma, 1953. Bruce Goff Archive, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. Digital file #199001_190117-008.
Sherry Faust’s gift will support five specific projects, all intended to protect and promote the legacy of the school.
Projects will include:
The Faust gift will elevate Gibbs College’s commitment to celebrating and furthering the American School’s legacy and impact. Gibbs College has partnered with OU Libraries in recent years to create both a digital American School Project collection and a physical American School Archive, which will be bolstered by the new positions to come from the Faust gift.
“The American School Project at Gibbs College has been further validated by Sherry and Bob’s gift,” said Hans E. Butzer, dean of the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture. “Their generosity will secure a legacy of leading scholars from all corners of the globe mining the Faust Collection and American School Archives in support of continued research and programming. Generations of faculty and students will ensure the impact of the American School, and its students will shape everyday discourse and practice in the face of continued global challenges.”
Learn more about this gift to Gibbs College and OU Libraries.
Featured Image: Robert L. Faust, Orchestration of Materials, Fourth Year Studio (Architecture 273) Assignment, Bruce Goff, Instructor, ca. 1954. Robert Faust Collection, American School Archive, University of Oklahoma Libraries.
Associate Professors Lee Fithian, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Pober have published a chapter in the recently released New Perspectives in Indoor Air Quality, published by Elsevier. Their contribution, titled “Chapter 16 – Architecture and the Challenges of Indoor Air Quality,” examines the relationship between architecture and indoor air quality.
Dr. Ladan Mozaffarian, Assistant Professor of Regional and City Planning, has been selected to serve as Co-Chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Planners of Color Interest Group (POCIG) for the 2025–2027 term.
The Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to recognize Tahsin Tabassum, a recent graduate of the college’s Master of Regional and City Planning program and current doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, for receiving the prestigious 2024–2025 American Planning Association (APA) Outstanding Student Award.
