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The Open Design Collective, a nonprofit design and planning firm founded by Vanessa Morrison and Deborah Richards, was recently featured in Architect magazine. Vanessa Morrison, the Associate Director of the University of Oklahoma’s Institute of Quality Communities, is a social-impact planner who lives and works in northeastern Oklahoma City. Deborah Richards, AIA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Gibbs College and a licensed architect in New York, Oklahoma and Massachusetts. Morrison and Richards founded the Open Design Collective to create an Oklahoma City-based design firm that centers community input and engagement as the main driver of the design process.
The article in Architect magazine reports on the Open Design Collective’s first major project, the South of 8th Street Masterplan. The Oklahoma City Redevelopment Authority commissioned the Open Design Collective to create a masterplan for property in northeastern Oklahoma City owned by the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority (OCURA). The historically Black area was severely impacted by past urban renewal and highway development efforts. The Open Design Collective engaged the community to develop a masterplan for future development in the area, which will be published sometime in the coming months.
To learn more about how the Open Design Collective engaged the community to develop the masterplan, read the Architect article.
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.
