A design-build project led by faculty in the University of Oklahoma Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture has been recognized with a 2026 Design-Build Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), a national organization representing accredited architecture programs across the United States and Canada.
The award honors the Urban Learning Greenhouse, an interdisciplinary design-build project co-led by Ken Marold, lecturer of Architecture, and Bryan Bloom, assistant professor of Construction Science. The project was nominated for its exemplary integration of curriculum, hands-on construction, and community engagement.
The Urban Learning Greenhouse in downtown Oklahoma City.
Located at an elementary school site in downtown Oklahoma City, the Urban Learning Greenhouse transformed an underutilized portion of a schoolyard into a modular greenhouse and outdoor classroom supporting STEAM education, urban agriculture, and ecological literacy. Over two academic semesters, architecture and construction science students collaborated from project conception through full-scale construction, gaining experience in client engagement, digital modeling, fabrication, budgeting, scheduling, and on-site assembly.
ACSA’s Design-Build Award recognizes projects that demonstrate how faculty and students translate design pedagogy into tangible, socially responsive outcomes. The greenhouse now serves as a daily learning environment for elementary students, linking food cultivation, pollinator awareness, and environmental systems directly to classroom instruction.
“This project demonstrates how design-build and a creating-making centered education can equip students with expanded capacity and readiness for professional practice, while serving real-world communities.” said Marold.
“The greenhouse represents applied learning in built form. Our studio delivered a working space that supports place-based learning, urban farming, and ecological stewardship in the heart of Oklahoma City. Through this process, architecture and construction science students were grounded in reflective practice, material understanding, and professional agency shaped by the accountability of designing and building for others.”
Left: Students fabricating greenhouse components in the shop.
Right: Students assembling greenhouse components on site.
Bloom emphasized the project’s collaborative and community-engaged dimensions. “We had taken on similar styles of projects before, using digital tools and engineered wood to fabricate these really interesting structures, but on a smaller scale. Once we settled in on the direction for John Rex, there had to be this immediate buy-in within the team that we could all actually pull it off together because it was such a big commitment for us.”
Bloom continued, “I think everyone felt that and straight away sort of had to let go of their own specific goals or ambitions that they may have had coming in to the studio. This is really the most vital lesson we can offer students: that achieving the highest consciousness of any work is about giving ourselves to something much bigger than our individual sets of ideas. This team really harnessed that shared authorship ethos and it shows in all the details, the craftmanship, and really the overall execution."
The Urban Learning Greenhouse was completed in June 2024 and involved more than 25 students across architecture and construction science courses, all of whom received academic credit in accordance with ACSA’s fair-labor standards. Its modular system and modest footprint make it a replicable model for other schools and communities seeking to integrate food security
Above: View the OU team’s portfolio submitted as part of the award nomination process.
Award recipients will be formally recognized at the 2026 ACSA Annual Meeting, where they will have the opportunity to present the project to educators and practitioners from across North America.
Since 2018, the American School Design-Build program has been a signature community-engagement and hands-on learning initiative of the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, providing Architecture and Construction Science students with interdisciplinary, full-scale design-build experiences. Learn more at https://www.ou.edu/gibbs/explore/design-and-build.
The Urban Learning Greenhouse and surrounding garden beds.
Robert L. Wesley, a pioneering architect and beloved mentor, has died at age 88. A graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Wesley joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in 1964 and became the firm's first Black partner in 1984. Throughout his career, he contributed to significant architectural projects while maintaining a strong commitment to civic engagement and professional mentorship.
The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture is proud to celebrate a series of recent accomplishments by Dr. Jim Collard, Professor of Practice in the Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design, whose work continues to shape conversations around Indigenous economic development nationally and internationally.
University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture Dean Hans E. [PA1.1]Butzer returned to one of his most significant works on December 15, joining survivors and past and present board members for the groundbreaking of a $15.8 million expansion of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.
