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.
Gibbs College is pleased to present the exhibition Vollendorf in Oklahoma: The Architecture of Dean Bryant Vollendorf during the Spring 2025 semester. It will be on display in Gould Hall, on the OU-Norman Campus, from February 16, 2026 - March 13, 2026.
On November 21, 2025, the Mainsite Contemporary Art gallery was transformed into a showcase of innovation and craftsmanship for the University of Oklahoma’s furniture design build studio exhibition, “Purpose in Form.”
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.
