Camila Coronado, a Master of Urban Design student with the Gibbs College of Architecture, is collaborating with Kendall-Whittier Main Street, a Tulsa based non-profit, on a project to envision enhancements to Whittier Square, a historical district in Tulsa.
Whittier Square was Tulsa’s first suburban shopping district. Along Route 66, businesses popped up in the late 1920s and the neighborhood thrived for decades. In 1967, however, a section of interstate highway bisected the neighborhood, which resulted in serious deterioration of the area. Kendall-Whittier Main Street was formed in 2010 in an effort to revitalize the area into what it once was. Since their founding, they have worked to bring back community events and an economic base to the area.
Camila Coronado is working to help Kendall-Whittier Main Street with their mission. She is pictured above promoting her Photovoice research activity at a recent event at Whittier Square. This activity involved distributing bilingual flyers to merchants as well attending community events to recruit residents to share their photos and stories about Whittier Square and the surrounding neighborhood. This firsthand information from residents and merchants will inform her designs for the Whittier Square area.
To explore more about Camila’s project or to help, click the link below!
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture professor and Institute for Quality Communities Director Dr. Amber N. Wiley’s book, Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital, has received two major honors from the Urban History Association.
Research initiated by Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture alumna Naila Hasan during her master’s studies at the University of Oklahoma has continued through faculty collaboration and resulted in a peer-reviewed publication in HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal.
Gibbs College of Architecture is pleased to announce Esther Thorp, Tyler Boydstun and Chukwuma Nwokoye as the winners of the 2026 Construction Innovation Translation Hub (CIThub) Student Ideas Competition.
