Bob G. Fillpot, FAIA
Dean, College of Architecture


Bob G. Fillpot practiced architecture in Houston twenty-nine years prior to beginning his full-time commitment to the formal education of our next generation of design professionals; architects, interior designers, landscape architects, regional and city planners, and constructors. Through the last twenty of those years, it was well known by his professional colleagues, friends, and his wife, Donna, and their two sons, that he held hope for, someday, turning his full-time energy toward architectural education; sharing his professional beliefs and experiences with those preparing to accept tomorrow’s responsibility for the built environment.
Dean Bob G. Fillpot, FAIA
Dean Bob G. Fillpot, FAIA
During the time between the years of his Houston practice, and his coming to OU, Fillpot undertook graduate study at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He holds a Harvard degree from the university’s Graduate School of Design; MDes, Master in Design Studies. While at Harvard, his study primarily focused on a better understanding of the unique relationship that exists between architectural education and the academy of higher education. He chose the detour through the GSD to experience, in contemporary terms, the challenges today’s design students encounter while in pursuit of their professional degrees — to understand the concerns and notions held by the current generation of students. He believes the GSD experience was essential to making an effective and meaningful transition from practice to higher education.

Over the years of his practicing architecture in Houston, he earned high regard from his professional colleagues for his mastery of high-rise architecture, multi-use sports/entertainment arenas, parking facility design, and mixed-use development planning. His experience also includes the design of university buildings, high rise hotels, and high rise condominiums. As principle-in charge, he, personally, directed his firm’s architectural design services for more high-rise buildings on Houston’s central skyline than any architect prior to, or subsequent to, his nearly three decade long contribution to Houston architecture. The architectural work actually constructed, under his personal direction and management, exceeds, in current dollars, three billion.

Per Houston Architecture.Info’s 2006 rating, his award winning fifty-story 1400 Smith Street high-rise still ranks, after 22 years, as Houston’s most admired building design. Four Allen’s #1 ranking sits atop Info’s list of Houston’s ninety-nine (99) most admired buildings. Among his other significant work, his design of the Orlando Arena ranked as a benchmark for NBA arena design during the first four years of the 1990s. Winning numerous awards, the Orlando project, designed to enrich the spectator experience, raised-the-bar for public multi-purpose arena design. After sixteen years, the arena continues to be one of the city’s most admired, and most photographed, works of architecture. The arena remains renowned for its attention to spectator enjoyment.

Fillpot is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Texas Tech’s College of Architecture, and, in 1992 was inducted into the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows (FAIA), an honor awarded to less than 1% of all registered architects in the nation.

Bob believes quality of the built environment is inseparably linked to humankind’s quality of life, regardless of locale, society, or culture. In response to that belief, he also believes two of the design professions’ chief obligations to society are; 1) to demonstrate and educate the public as to the reality of that link and its potential for enriching life, and, 2) educate today’s design students to understand their professions’ responsibility to society and help prepare them to make meaningful and relevant contributions toward meeting that responsibility.