The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to announce the Division of Architecture student winners of the 2025 Shaw Prize, TAP Prize, and MA+ scholarship.
The Shaw Prize: Emma Bock, 2nd year in Architecture
The TAP Prize: Elisa C. Wilson, 2nd year in Architecture
MA+ Scholarship: Ty Brown-Field, 3rd year in Architecture
Selection from the portfolio of Emma Bock, the 2025 Shaw Prize recipient.
The Shaw Prize and the TAP Prize are awarded as part of a 2nd-year architecture design studio portfolio competition. The 2nd year architecture design studio was tasked with designing their portfolios to highlight their undergraduate studio work, thereby enhancing their portfolio presentation skills. The final recommendations from each teaching team section were reviewed and put to a vote by the architecture division faculty.
The finalist portfolio winners successfully demonstrated their drawing and technical skills, creativity, and design thinking. Showcasing strong storytelling designs with concise narratives that successfully described the varied studio design challenges, their process, and their design proposals. Both students did a fantastic job of documenting their design process through sketches, diagrams, models, and iterations, which effectively illustrated how their ideas evolved over time, going beyond simply presenting finalized designs. In their unique style, each recipient authentically expresses their brand and design identity through their portfolio designs.
Selection from the portfolio of Elisa Wilson, the 2025 TAP Prize recipient.
The MA+ scholarship rotates annually between the Interior Design and Architecture programs. This year, it was available to architecture students. Of their student submissions for the project 772 Avenida San Patricio: A Dwelling for Contemporary Living, Professors Paolo Sanza and Amber Brown selected six. The project challenged students to design a concrete-made mixed-use infill project in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The submissions were anonymously forwarded to MA+ Architecture, who selected three finalists. From these three finalists, the Division of Architecture Scholarship Committee selected the awardee.
Axonometric drawing by Ty Brown-Field, the 2025 MA+ scholarship recipient.
The 772 Avenida San Patricio program comprised four commercial suites, one 1,800-square-foot apartment, one 350-square-foot minimal dwelling, and parking for six cars. The project also required students to respond sensitively to Puerto Rico’s rich culture, climate, and contemporary aesthetics. The project portfolio consisted of a design narrative, preliminary sketches, various orthographic drawings, multiple exploded axonometric drawings, and renderings.
Congratulations Emma, Elisa, and Ty!
The University of Oklahoma College of Architecture is proud to announce that Model Schools in the Model City, authored by Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., has been named one of ten finalists for the 2026 ASALH Book Prize for Best New Book in African American History and Culture.
This semester, students in the LA 5535 Studio: Ecological Planning and Design, led by Prof. Afsana Sharmin, took on an ambitious hypothetical project to redesign key parts of the OU campus. Their mission: to tackle the critical real-world challenge of stormwater management through innovative green design.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
