Telesis, the student journal of the University of Oklahoma (OU) Gibbs College of Architecture, reinforces the creative freedom of OU students, while providing an outlet for them to participate in important theoretical conversations about design. These volumes of Telesis, Habitation (Vol. IV) and Adaptive Practice (Vol. V), focus on two complementary questions: What should the next generation of architects aim to achieve through their work? And what types of practice best support these types of habitation? In Habitation, Telesis examines whether and how architecture can help to ensure all things, living and nonliving, may continue to inhabit our planet. In Adaptive Practice, the journal offers comparisons and critiques of the ways in which architects have leveraged their agency over time in support of habitation. These imaginative volumes explore new ways of being—for the living and non-living—as well as the design processes needed to make such co-produced habitation possible.

Angela Person is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma (OU), where her research and teaching engage architectural history and behavioral and emotional outcomes of the built environment. Person has a strong track record of scholarship and project management engaging the humanities, digital humanities, and museum studies. Before joining OU, she was a doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was first author of The Care and Keeping of Cultural Facilities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). She is coeditor of two additional scholarly books, Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture (OU Press, 2020) and Affective Architectures: More-than-Representational Geographies of Heritage (Routledge, 2021). She is also on a team that received National Endowment for the Arts “Art Works” funding to create an online interactive database of significant architectural projects designed by students of outsider architect Bruce Goff. Person holds a bachelors in environmental design, a masters in museum studies, and a doctorate in cultural geography.

Evan Sack holds a bachelors in architectural studies and an MArch degree from the University of Oklahoma. Sack is an intern architect at Butzer Architects and Urbanism located in Oklahoma City. While attending the University of Oklahoma, he participated as a team member in the AIA Central States Student Design Competition for which the team received second place. He participated in the College’s student journal, Telesis, on both the editorial team as a student in (F’18/S’19) and as the course instructor for “Telesis: Metamedia and Telesis: Isolation” (F’19 and F’20 respectively). Sack was employed by the College to work as a member of the team responsible for building architectural models showcased in the exhibition Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.  He also assisted with exhibition design alongside Höffner Design Studio.

Stephanie Pilat is the director of architecture at the University of Oklahoma. A designer and architectural historian, Pilat is the author of Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era (Ashgate, 2014), which earned the 2015 Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies. She is also coeditor of The Routledge Companion Guide to Fascist Italian Architecture and Urbanism: Reception and Legacy (Routledge, 2020) and Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture (OU Press, 2020). In 2015, she was named among the “30 Most Admired Educators” in the nation by DesignIntelligence. Pilat’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, a Rome Prize from the American Academy, the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Pilat holds a doctorate and master of sciences in architectural history from the University of Michigan and a bachelors degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati.

Ben DeCuyper holds an undergraduate architecture degree from the University of Oklahoma. DeCuyper is an intern architect at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris located in Oklahoma City. While attending the University of Oklahoma, DeCuyper participated as a team member in two separate AIA Central States Student Design Competitions and received 2nd place in each. He has participated in the College’s student journal, Telesis, by submitting an entry for the 2018 volume “Design Against” (OU Libraries, 2018). In 2019, he enrolled in the College’s Telesis course and assisted in the publication of Metamedia (OU Libraries, 2019). He was a member of the College’s Communications Team which developed an updated college website. DeCuyper was also employed by the College to work as a member of the team responsible for building architectural models showcased in the College exhibit Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture.

Gibbs College at the University of Oklahoma, whose oldest program was established in 1916, supports a future in which all communities are designed for resiliency and empowered to maximize their social, economic, and environmental well-being. Shaped by the legacy of renowned architect Bruce Goff, who was appointed chairman of the OU School of Architecture in 1947, the University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture’s approach to education is grounded in a sense of individualism and industriousness rooted in local conditions, a focus which remains to this day. The student journal of Gibbs College, Telesis was conceived by University of Oklahoma students in 2018 as the reincarnation of OU Architecture’s student journal from the 1970s, a then playful and irreverent publication. Today, Telesis’s mission is to provide a forum for students to draw connections that transcend immediate events and engage systemic problems, such as mass incarceration, through a praxis-based approach.