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The Community Catalyst team, recipients of a 2024–2025 Gibbs Design in Action Award (GDAA), partnered with Sisu Youth Services Inc. to provide architectural services that support the organization’s goal of ending homelessness in the Oklahoma City area. The GDAA is a grant initiative that supports student-led design and research projects that critically engage issues of community, social, and economic concern within the built environment. Through this program, students explore meaningful questions and propose creative design solutions that respond to community needs across Oklahoma.
Site plan showing the pavilion location at Sisu Youth Services in Oklahoma City.
The Community Catalyst team undertook a winding process of learning how to support the design needs of this non-profit. They worked with Sisu Youth Services to create marketing materials for community outreach programming and to reimagine a recently acquired neighboring property, where the organization plans to expand its existing housing. Local architect AHMM had developed a design, but Sisu Youth faced resistance from the surrounding neighborhood. As a trust-building effort, the team helped the organization activate the lot as a public space. Their work culminated in a design-build pavilion that gives young residents a sheltered outdoor space to socialize—its teal blue canopy conferring identity to the center and its community.
Left: Display boards show the students’ “Roots of Recognition” project for Sisu Youth Services. Right: OU architecture students Emma Eitzen, Jordan Hughes, and Gracie Kimbrell stand in front of the completed teal-canopy pavilion.
OU architecture students and community members work together to install posts for the new pavilion at Sisu Youth Services in Oklahoma City.
Walkthrough of the project.
During the Spring 2026 semester, students in Interior Design Studio IV and Graduate Studio IV gained hands-on experience in educational facility design through a semester-long partnership with MA+ Architecture.
The Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture congratulates Dr. Tammy McCuen, Robert E. Busch Professor of Construction Science, on beginning her term as president of the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC), an international organization dedicated to advancing construction education through teaching, research and service.
Following years of contributions to the College’s research and strategic initiatives, Gibbs College shares that Associate Dean for Research and External Engagement Angela M. Person, PhD, will step down from her position at Gibbs College as she moves to Tucson with her family, effective June 30, 2026.
