The 2018 AIA Central States’ Student Design Competition recently challenged students to design an urban neighborhood which could reinvent the “art of city life” in downtown Tulsa’s Pearl District. The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture team placed second with their proposal entitled “Collective.” Their project introduces apartments, office spaces, retail shopping and an art gallery to the area. Collective also strongly addresses the existing buildings located on the site and the site’s need for water management. The GCA team included Evan Sack, Kyle Berger, Tanaka Kawondera and Ben DeCuyper with faculty sponsor Francesco Cianfarani. Other participating universities included Oklahoma State University, Washington University, University of Kansas, Kansas State University, University of Nebraska, Drury University and Iowa State.
Featured Image: The GCA team’s rendering of “Collective” for the 2018 AIA Central States Student Design Competition
For more information about the competition, visit the AIA Central States Emerging Professionals website.
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.
