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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

The vision of the School of Architecture is to empower students to make creative contributions in the cause of architecture. The mission of the School of Architecture is to cultivate a collaborative learning community focused upon critical thinking and ethical responsibility. We embrace established fundamentals and encourage the exploration of emerging innovations in design and technology.

Reflections Vol. XVI Spring 2025

REFLECTIONS The Spring 2025 semester is complete, and it has been a successful and prosperous one for the School of Architecture (SoA). This semester we had the largest ever enrollment in our program, with 454 students declaring Architecture, Architectural Engineering, or Architectural Design Studies as their major. The SoA was active throughout the semester, with outstanding student work and faculty research, and with 47 students graduating from the SoA this spring for a total of 65 graduates this academic year! This summer, our Study Abroad program will have over 50 students participating, and we will once again have eight of our faculty involved on trips to Europe and Asia. Additionally, we will be able to interact with future architects and engineers through multiple summertime engagements offered by the SoA, CEAT, and OSU. Over the past year the SoA has been searching for the new Head of our program; the search was successful and an announcement will be made in the near future. That means my time as the SoA Interim Head is quickly coming to an end, at which time I will shift back to full-time teaching. It has been my honor and privilege to act as the Interim Head over the past two years, and I thank the students, staff, faculty, alumni, and CEAT and OSU administrators for their support along the way. Without their help, the School of Architecture could not have been successful in this time of transition for the program. Enjoy the articles and updates in this newsletter, and please stay in touch with what is happening at the School of Architecture. Also, let us know what you are up to as we always want to tell the world about the good things our students and alumni are accomplishing. Go Pokes! John Phillips, P.E. Professor and Interim Head School of Architecture john.j.phillips@okstate.edu

Website: https://ceat.okstate.edu/arch/ Facebook: Oklahoma State University School of Architecture Instagram: @OkStateArch

THANK YOU, 2025 FRIENDS!

$25,000+ CORINTHIAN LEVEL

$5,000+ IONIC LEVEL

Reid Burton Kathleen Gardner GH2 Architects Kenneth Gray Elizabeth & Richard Halley Harris Foundation Valda & Randy Kreie

Alpha Consulting Engineers, with Thom & Leslie Campbell Architects Collective, with Larry Kester Mallory & Price Buckley Jerry & Renee Conduff Sharon & Michael Damore Susan & Robert Evans Frankfurt Short Bruza & Associates Janet & Brad Gaskins Glenn Partners, with Patrick & Briar Glenn Virginia & James Hart Belinda & Jim Hasenbeck Patrice & William Lundeen Kerri & David Powell Wallace Design Collective PC Neal Willison

The Friends of the School of Architecture has been a great success since it was established. The support of our Friends is tremendous, allowing our programs to be supported across a number of initiatives. Thanks so much for your support! In a recap of the gifts received during the 2024-25 academic year, the following loyal and true alumni have provided their support for the School of Architecture, joining the Friends of the School of Architecture.

$1,000+ DORIC LEVEL AIA Oklahoma AISC Education Foundation Edward & Lauren Brien Bond Linda Bryant Cyntergy AEC Aubree Diebolt Suzanne & Dallas Branch Coreslab Structures Deborah & Roy Dean Chere & Kevin Fergerson Kirkpatrick Forest Curtis Engineering Deanna & Tim Lovett Hui Min Liaw & Ko Makabe Linda & Phillip McCurdy Patricia & John Meek Phyllis & Steven O’Hara Oklahoma City Section

Anna & Steven Parks Pella of Oklahoma Mark & Susanne Thompson Leesha & Eric Vogt Katherine & Keith Yancey W&W | AFCO Steel

▲ Emily Nikkel, Thomas Raber, Abigail Richardson, & Emily Smith

URBAN STUDIO

BEACON PARK YARD This spring, students in the fifth-year Urban Design Studio, led by Professor Nathan Richardson and Assistant Professor Blake Mitchell, took on the challenge of reimagining Beacon Park Yard in Boston, MA. Working in teams of four, each group developed its own vision for the site--an area defined by rail lines, elevated highways, and existing infrastructure. A major component of the project was designing a new transit hub that would better connect the site to the surrounding city and region. Over the course of the semester, students carried out in-depth research and explored a range of design strategies aimed at creating more livable, connected, and resilient urban environments. Each proposal was shaped with a careful balance of economic, architectural, and human-centered considerations. The goal was to ground ideas in realistic planning and meaningful community impact. In March, each team visited Boston to present their initial proposals and resarch to a selection of architecture and urban design firms. These meetings offered direct feedback from professionals and gave students the chance to test their ideas in conversation with people actively working in the field. The input received played an important role in shaping the final direction of each proposal. The results of the studio show a wide range of possibilities for the future of Beacon Park Yard, reflecting the creativity, discipline, and ambition of the students involved.

▲ Opening of exhibition of student work (top left, above)

► Students on tour of OSU’s central plant.

▲ Kasey Fuquay, Hannah Hembree, Jenkins Peek, & Whitney Waitsman

◄ Emily Nikkel, Thomas Raber, Abigail Richardson, & Emily Smith

OPTION STUDIO

SUPER ROOFS Architecture of Native America

One section of the fourth year option studio explored architecture of native America. The students, led by Assistant Professor Bailey Morgan Brown Mitchell, considered the contemporary spatial realities of Indian Country by proposing spatial interventions on a site adjacent to the Cherokee National Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital city of the Cherokee Nation. The project considered spatial sovereignty as a fundamental condition of inherent tribal legal sovereignty. Students researched a range of topics, from the history of native art and archaeology to current Cherokee Nation initiatives, while also researching Cherokee folklore and precedents. The design project was divided into three phases. At the end of each phase, students produced four deliverables: an axon, plan, perspective, and physical model. The scale doubled in each phase both physically and conceptually. Students completed all phases in paired teams. Projects included speculative proposals for the Cherokee Nation Center for Handcraft & Manufacturing, the Cherokee Nation Research Center on PTSD & Psychedelics, The Cherokee Nation Center for Legal Advocacy, and the Living Languages Welcome Center (just to name a few). The studio assumed the centrality of the discipline of architecture; the design proposals were spatial first, yet critically informed by innovative research and rich cultural knowledge.

▲ Braden Mcanear & Grant Harrington (left), Logan Lanphear & Ethan Briix (right)

▲ Logan Lanphear & Ethan Briix (top), Desi Johnson & Jai Simpson (bottom)

▲ Exhibition and presentation of student work.

OPTION STUDIO

BIOMIMICRY Inspiration from Nature

Biomimicry acknowledges that nature has inspired architecture for millennia, and through recent discoveries, designers understand more fully the wealth of biological information available. Associate Professor Jay Yowell has taught Biomimicry as a seminar at the SoA since 2017, which introduces the tools and principles of biomimicry and seeks ways to apply them effectively to human design challenges. Starting last spring, Yowell offered Bio-Inspired Architecture as one of the four Options Studios to bring a similar research methodology into the design studio. This semester, each of the 15 students began by researching and defining a design issue with current building skins. The problems they explored focused on water, heat, pollution and carbon dioxide capture, and materials. Next, each student researched natural systems for strategies to address these issues. They explored a wide variety of biological examples in both flora and fauna, including hedgehogs, Saharan silver ants, baleen whales, birds, barrel cactus, fungi, and others. The students proposed an architectural building skin solution inspired by one of these biological systems for a final project. To design effective solutions, it was vital for students to ask the right questions and seek the essence of the problems they were trying to solve. Intentional, research-based precedents were shown in class to introduce a scientific approach to design, especially utilizing the scientific method’s process of rapid experimentation. The students were encouraged to ‘fail small, fail fast, and fail early’ as seen in so many scientific experiments. The extra time in studio allowed us to explore solutions through experimenting and prototyping solutions in either drawings or constructed models. The studio culminated in an end-of-year exhibit, with experts from OSU in many different disciplines attending and commenting on the students’ work.

OPTION STUDIO

ARCHITECTURE AS CULTURAL MACHINE Model as Speculative History

Model-making is not only a way to describe an existing idea, it can be generative. In this course model-making was used to explore and produce ideas that became an architectural dialogue about history. The course ARCH4203: Architecture as Cultural Machine taught by Assistant Professor Dr. Jared Macken explored the ways that architecture and its discourse can become a lens for better understanding the world around us. The students and the course instructor developed, from architectural discourse, specific methods for collecting historical data, developing tools of critical analysis, and designing artifacts (models) that transport an audience into alternative histories. These historical genealogies create new truths from data and facts that have been suppressed by regimes of colonization and cultural exploitation. The course’s main output were models designed to be an interface between audience and architectural ideas; the speculative models become ways of visiting historical architectural spaces that have been lost over time.

▲ Jadilene Gutierrez, Sophie Sweeny, & Bethany Wilmoth

▲ Oscar Escamilla, Jennifer Nicolae, Kosta Parperis (top), Josh Daly, Isabel Martinez, Evelyn Pate, Grant Rupe (bottom-left), Daniela Ortiz-Perez, Rebecca Estrada, Dylan Tuttle (bottom-right

▲ Alex Corman, Jo Migis, Sultan Cheema, & Devin Bruner (top) Jillian Hermes, George Galvan, Olivia Harris, & Daniel Bonilla (bottom)

OPTION STUDIO

MOUND-BUILDING

Conceptual Landforms & Cultural Landscapes The earthen constructions known as mounds, built by the Indigenous Mississippian cultures throughout the eastern half of North America from the 8th to the 16th century CE, could be understood as both singular landforms and collective landscapes. The mounds, as landforms, were mediums for conceptual ideation, not excluding politics, aesthetics, and urbanism, while the landscapes they proliferated embodied a cultural vitality and spiritual economy over an expansive geographic area. Thus, mounds were seen not only for their physical features but also as perceptually transformative objects that organized a collective consciousness across the territories of the Mississippian civilization. This option studio, taught by Assistant Professor James Piccone, challenged students to explore new design approaches to landform buildings by synthesizing research on mound-building cultures with computational techniques such as photogrammetric excavation and physical drapery simulation. Situated at the historical Spiro Mounds site in eastern Oklahoma, the studio proposed a new Archaeological Center to replace the existing visitor center there and provide new facilities for the longterm preservation of cultural artifacts. By thinking about mounds as cultural monuments, physical objects that want to fall apart, and digital models that can be fractured and reassembled into new wholes, students discovered unique ways of integrating Mississippian history into a contemporary design strategy.

▲ Summer Tate, Arielle Sumners, Josue Monterroso, & Josiah Holliday

THIRD YEAR STUDIO

STUDENT SUCCESS CENTER STUDIO This semester, Professor Seung Ra led one section of ARCH 3216 as an advanced architectural design studio that emphasized project phasing, teamwork, and interpretive design within a comprehensive masterplan. An eight-week project for a Student Success Center at OSU was structured into three phases: Project Definition, Masterplan Development, and Individual Design Focus. The studio began with an intensive Project Definition Phase, in which students collectively investigate the core goals, challenges, and opportunities for the Student Success Center. This phase emphasized analytical thinking and contextual understanding, prompting students to explore site conditions, user needs, programmatic requirements, and broader urban impacts. The findings established a foundation for strategic planning, ensuring that the masterplan responded effectively to the complexities of campus life. During the Masterplan Development Phase, students collaborated in four-person teams to craft siteresponsive strategies that responded to the identified goals and challenges. Using architecture as a tool for storytelling, each team weaved fictional narratives into their design proposals, translating concepts into transformative spatial solutions that could serve the needs of the OSU community. The final Individual Design Focus allowed each student to advance a specific architectural component of the masterplan. This phase emphasized critical thinking, spatial refinement, and narrative-driven design to deliver context-sensitive proposals that resonated with aspirations for the broader campus. Through the course of the semester, students not only designed structures but crafted stories that imagine, engage, and realize meaningful change in the built environment.

▲ Hannah Graham

▲ Josue King (top), Ethan Davis, Zach Matthews, Kaci Marshall, Kaitlyn Morin (bottom)

SECOND YEAR STUDIO

BAD DATA

The second-year studio explored the topics of SITE, SPACE, SURFACE, and SYNTHESIS through a four-week project focused on a particular mode of representation: plan, section, elevation, and diagram, respectively. The goal was to strengthen students’ grasp of the incredible potential for representation to generate architectural ideas and foster conceptual exploration. The studio was led by Keith Peiffer as coordinator, with faculty members Michael Frush, Jared Macken, and Jay Yowell. Within the pedagogical interests noted above, the studio explored the role of data centers in contemporary society. This is an especially timely issue; data centers are affecting our local context through the planned construction of up to six Google data centers off of Perkins Road in Stillwater, as well as well as enabling our everyday experience through the use of ubiquitous technology and devices like smartphones and EVs. Professional architects and engineers from Corgan and LA Fuess presented their expertise on data center design to supplement the students’ own research. Using speculative design, the studio explored the potential for “bad” data centers by designing data centers driven by different priorities that challenge the efficiency and best practices of typical data centers. By realigning the ambitions of the data center to consider other programs and other users, design can become a way to question, challenge, and explore the implications of contemporary culture and technology.

▲ Site visit for the Farmer’s Market project.

▼ (l to r, top to bottom) Hannah Seeley, Brendan Pittman, Jessica Dao, Alyssa West, & Melvin Villegas

▲ Notan project by Gavin Garcille (top), Cafe project by Teagan Traylor (bottom)

FIRST YEAR STUDIO

DESIGN STUDIO I First-year studio introduced foundational design principles, elements, and process through a series of four projects and journal exercises. The studio was led by Assistant Professor Sarah Ra, with five faculty: Assistant Professors Bailey Brown, Alex Campbell, James Piccone, and Visiting Instructors John Dunn and Jacey Watson. The semester began with an exercise in composition and abstraction called the Notan. This three-week project introduced new students to both drawing and modeling through a compositional study derived from Japanese prints, exploring both figure-ground and the element of color. Next, students learned about proportion, scale, and ordering systems with the classic Cube project. For the third project, they explored narrative design and structure through the Bridge; students balanced the reality of gravity with the opportunity to design expressive forms to tell a story and shape experience. For their final design endeavor, they explored the spatial implications of automation with the Robot Café. This five-week project introduced basic architectural research through journaling, followed by their first encounter with an architectural program. The project challenged students to integrate their new knowledge of design principles and elements with an iterative process to create their first work of architecture.

▲ Bridge project by Brody Marschall

▲ Congratulations and best wishes to our Spring 2025 graduates!

Newsletter designed and published by John Phillips, Keith Peiffer, and James Piccone at the Oklahoma State University School of Architecture. Printed on Mohawk Via Light Gray with a smooth finish. Bound at the Oklahoma State University School of Architecture. Original content authors retain copyright of their creative work. ©2025 The Oklahoma State University School of Architecture Image Credits (page numbers in parentheses): Brandy DeVous (1), Chelsea Wooldridge (3, 6-7), Bailey Brown Mitchell (10), Jay Yowell (12), Jared Macken (14-15), Jana Phillips (24)