The Happy Healthy Home Show recently invited Gibbs College alumnus Don Ruggles as an inaugural guest. Don joined the show’s host Odile Smith in their shared passion for making wellness in the home (and all built surroundings) a priority.
A practicing architect and founder of Ruggles Mabe Studio, Don has spent his 50-plus year career trying to answer the question, “What is beauty?” Since the early 2000s, he’s spoken with and read the works of fellow architects, scientists, neurologists, and other experts, and participated in symposiums and conferences around the globe to discuss the impact of beauty on humankind.
Don has also published the book, Beauty, Neuroscience & Architecture: Timeless Patterns & Their Impact on Our Well-Being, which investigates how timeless forms and patterns in design affect our health and well-being. The book was made into a full-length documentary in 2020 titled, Built Beautiful, An Architecture & Neuroscience Love Story with Narration by Martha Stewart. It suggests a new, urgent effort is needed to refocus the direction of design to include the quality of beauty as a fundamental, overarching theme in two of humankind’s most important fields — the built and artistic environments.
The Happy Healthy Home Show’s premier was held on May 14 and featured conversations with twenty-one different specialists including academics, bestselling authors, and design experts. The interviews are focused on the following topics that, together, lead to creating a space of wellness in our homes:
• Scientific – neuroscience & design psychology
• Nature – biomimicry & biophilic design
• Interior Design – light/applied color psychology
• Energy – fengshui & crystals
• Sustainability – trail blazer manufacturers
• Communication/Storytelling
Connecting the dots between these areas of focus, Happy Healthy Home Show viewers will see that to create a place of wellness for the user, several aspects must be taken into consideration as must the individuality of the final user.
During Don’s conversation with Odile Smith on the Happy Health Home Show, he shared his thoughts on the responsibility of architects and other designers to create spaces with health and well-being in mind. To watch the interview, visit the show's webpage.
Telesis, a journal produced by students in the University of Oklahoma Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture, has earned first place in the 2026 Douglas Haskell Award for Student Journals for its seventh volume, “Unfold.” This marks the fourth time the publication has earned recognition for excellence in student architectural journalism. It shares the honor with student journals from Columbia University, University of Michigan, and Cal Poly.
Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Thinh "Henry" Duong, a master's student in the Division of Interior Design, for earning first place in the 2026 Robert Bruce Thompson Annual Student Light Fixture Design Competition.
Gibbs College of Architecture Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Director and Division of Planning, Landscape Architecture, and Design (PLAD) faculty member Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., recently published a new book, Collective Yearning: Black Women Artists from the Zimmerli Art Museum.
