Gibbs College is pleased to host a two-part presentation this Thursday, October 7th from 3:00pm – 5:00pm in the Gould Hall Gallery. The event will be presented by Dr. Sergei Gepshtein, who directs research of Adaptive Sensory Technologies at the Salk Institute in San Diego and research of Spatial Perception and Concrete Experience at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Dr. Tiziana Proietti, the director of the Sense|Base laboratory here at the Gibbs College of Architecture.
Dr. Gepshtein is a scientist working in the areas of perceptual psychology and systems neuroscience. His research interests include perception of depth and movement, perceptual organization and Gestalt, multisensory integration, planning of multistep actions, and dynamics of cortical neural networks.
He is a member of the Center for Neurobiology of Vision at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (San Diego) and Adjunct Professor at the School of Cinematic Art at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles). At the latter, he recently founded the Center for Spatial Perception and Concrete Experience: a platform for investigating spatial experience as a natural narrative process.
The Sense|Base laboratory, directed by Dr. Tiziana Proietti, is housed at C. Gibbs College of Architecture of the University of Oklahoma. It is an interdisciplinary laboratory that bridges architecture and neuroscience with an emphasis on the perception of architectural proportion.
The first part of this presentation, titled “Species of Space,” will be presented by Dr. Gepshtein. “Species of Space” will explore the experience of space in science and design. Dr. Gephstein investigates the notion of a new architectural object. He shows how the space of experience is articulated by boundaries that arise from the human body. Although intangible and fluid, these boundaries are nevertheless real and systematic, which is why they readily yield to the methods of science.
The second part, titled “Architectural Proportion from an Empirical Standpoint,” will be presented by Dr. Gephstein and Dr. Tiziana Proietti. The presentation focuses on an interdisciplinary program of research.
They will ask the question, “How does architectural proportion affect our experience of the built environment?” After centuries of pondering the role of proportion in architecture, this question has remained unanswered. Drs. Tiziana Proietti and Sergei Gepshtein attack this controversy from a modern standpoint that incorporates the scientific method.
They have developed an interdisciplinary program of research in which they study the perception of proportion using methods of sensory psychophysics and systems neuroscience. They argue that, as a starting point, it is important to understand under which conditions proportions are perceptible by the flesh-and-blood person who moves freely through space and observes it under various distances and angles.
For more information and to request accommodation, contact Dr. Tiziana Proietti – tiziana.proietti@ou.edu.
Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to recognize Petya Stefanoff, who is pursuing her doctorate in the Planning, Design & Construction (PDC) program, has been appointed the new role of Director of Community Development for the City of Shawnee, Oklahoma. She joined the city in 2024.
Gibbs College of Architecture is pleased to announce that Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture and Design and director of the Institute for Quality Communities, has received national recognition for her book Model Schools in the Model City. The book has been named a finalist for the 2026 the PROSE Awards.
Gibbs College of Architecture Regional + City Planning Professor of Practice Vanessa Morrison and Associate Professor of Architecture Deborah Richards’ Open Design Collective received top honors at the inaugural BlackSpace Urbanist Collective Studio KIN Pitch Night Competition, held last month in Brooklyn, New York City.
