The American School team is proud to partner with the University of Oklahoma Libraries to begin an oral history project. The project will collect and preserve stories from alumni, family, friends, and clients of the American School. Dr. Shooka Motamedi, lecturer of architecture at the University of Oklahoma, is conducting these interviews, which will be transcribed and uploaded onto the OU Libraries searchable platform in the coming months.
Our first interview, with Bob Bowlby (OU Architecture, Class of 1957), was a delightful conversation filled with anecdotes about his time at OU and beyond. Bowlby (b. 1934, Oklahoma City) studied at OU and later worked for Bruce Goff in Bartlesville before becoming a licensed architect in the early 1960s. Around the time he designed the well-known Founders Bank in Oklahoma City, he became a prolific architectural photographer. He took photos of many mid-century buildings in Oklahoma and beyond for various publications. Over the years, he lived and worked in Kentucky, Houston, Denver, Lake Tahoe, and Carmel before returning to Denver, where he settled permanently. Today, Bowlby’s photograph and slide collection is held by the American School Archive.
If you or anyone you know would like to be interviewed as part of the American School oral history project, please complete this form.
Header image: The Founder’s Bank, designed by Bob Bowlby and completed in 1964 in Oklahoma City (demolished in 2018). Photograph by Julius Schulman.
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.
In May, students from the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture's Architecture, Environmental Design, and Interior Design programs participated in an intensive five-day Studio in Residence at Taliesin West, the iconic winter home and desert laboratory of Frank Lloyd Wright.
