Design Resilient Communities

EnD 4970, University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture, Spring 2026
Monday, Wednesday, & Friday 11:00 - 11:50 AM, Gould Hall 390
Dr. Wei Liu, AICP, CNU-A (Instructor), wliu@ou.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 2 – 3 PM at Gould Hall 245L or remotely by Zoom, request by email

Communities today face an array of interconnected challenges, including climate change, social inequity, economic uncertainty, and environmental stress. In this context, resilience, the capacity of a community to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of natural or human-made disruptions, has become a critical framework for contemporary environmental design practice. Designing Resilient Communities introduces students to theories, principles, and strategies of community resilience, with a particular emphasis on public space as a form of critical social, environmental, and civic infrastructure.

The course combines lectures, discussions, and labs with applied, experiential learning. Students will engage in a time-intensive design charrette with professional design experts and community partners, develop hands-on responses to a real-world challenge in a local context, and deliver student-led presentations based on resilient cities reports to build comparative and international perspectives.

A central component of the course is a two-day intensive design charrette, a professional practice model commonly used in urban design and planning. Students will work collaboratively in teams during the charrette to synthesize research, stakeholder input, and design strategies into actionable proposals. The charrette will be co-led by the course instructor and nationally renowned architect and urban designer Victor Dover, providing students with direct exposure to professional design leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Offered in partnership with the Institute for Quality Communities (IQC), the course centers on a real community-based project in the City of Durant, Oklahoma. By the end of the semester, students will synthesize research, community engagement, and design thinking to produce actionable design recommendations that support long-term social, environmental, and spatial resilience for the community.

Schedules

Go to the recent section. This schedule is subject to change, and please check back regularly for updates. All readings and materials can be directly accessed via the links below, although some may require a OU NetID login. Please give us any anonymous suggestions about the lectures, discussion, design progress, or anything using the anonymous suggestions box.

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