Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to announce that Dr. Wanda Katja Liebermann, associate professor of Architecture, has been awarded the University of Oklahoma Vice President for Research and Partnerships Award for Excellence in Research, Design, and Creative Expression in the Humanities and Fine Arts for her scholarly monograph, Architecture’s Disability Problem.
Architecture’s Disability Problem represents a significant achievement in architectural scholarship. It is the first book to examine how architecture and disability intersect in the United States, spanning education, policy, and professional practice. Dr. Wanda Katja Liebermann argues that the profession’s focus on code compliance has often come at the expense of deeper creative, cultural, and ethical engagement with disability.
The book highlights a key contradiction: despite the ADA’s profound impact on the built environment, meaningful design innovation remains limited, and disability is largely absent from architecture’s discussions of spatial justice.
“Through this book, Dr. Liebermann demonstrates how cultural assumptions about the body are embedded in design education and professional practice.” said Hans E. Butzer, dean of the Gibbs College of Architecture. “Her research and case studies show how design shaped by disabled people can transform architectural outcomes, professional roles, and disciplinary norms, offering a new framework for understanding the built environment.”
Moving beyond critique, Dr. Liebermann examines how assumptions about a standardized body are embedded in architectural procedures, training, and bureaucracy, often excluding atypical bodies. Case studies such as DeafSpace design at Gallaudet University illustrate how spatial and embodied experience can be translated into architectural frameworks through collaboration with disabled communities.
“The book's innovative methodological approach particularly distinguishes it within the field, as it offers embedded interpretations of architectural culture from both insider and analyst perspectives.” said Dr. Vladimir Kulić, Professor, Department of Architecture, Iowa State University. “Liebermann’s interdisciplinary framework, drawing from architectural history, disability studies, and science and technology studies, offers fresh analytical tools for understanding how built environments work at functional, affective, and symbolic levels.”
Since its release, the digital edition has been downloaded more than 1,400 times across 14 countries and 62 institutions, and the book is now held by 137 libraries worldwide. At a moment of urgent questions for the field, Architecture’s Disability Problem reframes disability not as a problem to be accommodated, but as a lens through which architecture can rethink its methods, values, and obligations.
The award is conferred upon tenured or tenure-track OU faculty members whose career long and/or recent work offers a transformative new direction in humanistic or creative development. Innovative research projects for this award may be oriented toward analyses of the past, present, and future that have the potential to transform a field of study and/or to offer new directions in community-engaged research. Eligible projects must fall within the disciplines of the humanities, arts, and new media.
Wanda Katja Liebermann is an architectural and urban historian and Associate Professor of Architecture at the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Liebermann’s research focuses on theories and practices of architecture and urbanism in relationship to US political movements, in particular, disability rights. Her interdisciplinary work investigates the relationship between architecture and embodiment, across a range of spatial practices, from urban design to historic preservation, contributing new insights to discourses of agency, difference, and assimilation within and beyond conventional liberal democratic politics. In addition to her book Architecture’s Disability Problem (Routledge, 2024), Dr. Liebermann’s writing has appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Future Anterior, the Journal of Architecture, the Journal of Design History, and several edited anthologies. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, a UC Berkeley Arcus Endowment, the Arnold J. Brunner Grant, and a Graham Foundation Individual Research Grant. Liebermann received a Doctor of Design from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from UC Berkeley. She is a licensed architect who practiced for fifteen years in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a Doctor of Design from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from UC Berkeley. Her teaching combines design practice with architectural history, theory, and criticism, offering students tools to connect formal and critical inquiry.
The Gibbs Design in Action Awards (GDAA) program, led by Dr. Wanda Liebermann, has announced its 2026–2027 funded student projects. The initiative supports design and research work that addresses social, cultural, and economic issues in the built environment through collaboration with faculty and community partners.
The OU Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) 2024 collaboration with the Historic Threatt Filling Station has been recognized in the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's newly released Byways Report: The Scenic Route to Rural Prosperity – a story-driven publication exploring how road trip culture and place-based tourism can fuel economic growth in rural communities.
The Gibbs College of Architecture is pleased to announce that Camille Germany, Chief of Staff, has been named the 2026 recipient of the university-wide Jennifer L. Wise Good Stewardship Award.
