Architecture students collaborate with Morgan State students for installation

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A group of first-year architecture students from the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School teamed up with a group of architecture graduate students at Morgan State University to design a public art installation that was displayed at Artscape, the nation's largest free outdoor arts festival, in Baltimore, May 23-24.

Teisha Bradley, assistant teaching professor of architecture and a Morgan State alumna, selected four students based on their “excellent work and dedication” in Bradley's ARCH 131: Basic Design Studio course in the fall 2025 semester. The team then responded to an open call for artists in the spring semester in the hopes that “they would experience a meaningful opportunity to engage in collaborative design, fabrication and public-facing creative work,” Bradley said.

Having also taught at Morgan State, a historically Black university, for three years before coming to Penn State, Bradley recalled her own experience with the festival, having had the opportunity to see her fellow peers participate in Artscape for years.

“It was empowering to see students complete a design-build project as an aspiring architect,” Bradley said of her time at Morgan State. “It’s where imagination meets reality.”

First-year students Ellen Blackburn, Ashima Rae Gopal, Holland Harrell and August Henwood had to come up with a design around the theme of this year’s festival, which was “Bold. Transformative. Unapologetically Baltimore.” The group ultimately decided to focus on the iconic stoops of Baltimore row homes and named the project “Our Stoop, Our Culture, Our City.”

“Our design concept came from thinking about the stoop as more than just a physical structure and diving deeper into its historical significance as a place for gathering, storytelling, conversation and community connection,” Blackburn said.

According to Blackburn, the team wanted the project to reflect the social and cultural importance of stoop culture while also reflecting the festival’s theme by creating an interactive and welcoming space. The design, she said, encourages people to stop, engage with one another, and experience the sense of community that stoop culture creates.

The Penn State team proposed the design concept for the installation, discussed design iterations, and developed construction documents during weekly Zoom meetings with the Morgan State team, all outside of class time. During those meetings, the Penn State students had to figure out “how to explain our ideas well enough for the Morgan State students to bring them to life,” Harrell said.

Gopal said the group received helpful feedback about what information the Morgan State team needed in terms of the design and the construction for the fabrication.

“Learning from our peers and hearing from different perspectives was so insightful, especially for us first-year students who are learning how to make good, comprehensive design and construction documents,” Gopal said.

Blackburn also said she and her classmates received a lot of valuable feedback about how they could make the design more reflective of Baltimore’s culture and community.

“Since none of us are originally from Baltimore, it was helpful to hear from the Morgan State students and professors about what they felt were the most important aspects of the city’s culture and identity, and how those ideas could be represented within the project,” Blackburn said.

As the project progressed from design to construction and structural planning, the Morgan State team provided significant input on how to make the installation structurally sound and realistically buildable.

“Their experience gave us valuable insight into what methods and materials would work best, and their feedback played an important role in helping us turn the concept into a feasible final design,” Blackburn said.

When asked about the experience, Harrell said it was challenging to come up with ways to express their ideas as first-year students but that the Morgan State students were understanding and the process ran smoothly.

“I learned a lot about communication and how important it is to be able to put your thoughts on paper in a way that others can understand,” Harrell said.

Blackburn echoed Harrell’s appreciation of the communication needed on collaborative projects.

“I learned a lot about collaboration, communication and the design process. Working with a range of people with different interests and specialties showed me how different perspectives can improve a project creatively and conceptually,” Blackburn said. “I also gained more experience in the process of developing an idea from concept all the way to fabrication.”

Bradley said she hopes her students will apply the skills they learned in their first-year classes to future projects.

“Learning how to conduct design meetings and produce RFP (request for proposal) packages are crucial skills that many young architects do not get to experience first-hand as these students have.”

The team’s final work was on full display at Baltimore’s longstanding public arts festival, known for celebrating visual art, performance, music and community engagement.