What) Oral Roberts University is an interdenominational, Charismatic Christian, comprehensive university with an enrollment of 3,200 students from 50 U.S. states along with a significant number of international students from 50 countries. Founded in 1963, the university is named for its late founder, evangelist Oral Roberts, and is the largest Charismatic Christian university in the world.
The campus
was built beginning in 1963 with a noted futuristic look and
architecture. Architects Stanfield, Imel & Walton of Tulsa
designed the 1963 master plan but most of the buildings were
designed by Tulsa architect Frank Wallace. Interviewed in
2010, Wallace characterized his ORU buildings as "sculptures",
noting that an inspiration for his artistic sensibility was
"whittling since I was a kid". By 2007, the campus was
described as "a perfect representation of the popular
modernistic architecture of the time... the set of the The
Jetsons" but also "shabby" and "dated, like Disney's
Tomorrowland." Maintenance of the many unique but aging
buildings, structures and architectural details on campus was
cited as a growing problem for the university. (1)
Where) South Lewis Avenue between East 75th Street and East 81st Street in South Tulsa
Why)
Something about this place seems to inspire critics to write
snarky descriptions. Consider this over the top example from
page 266 of The Best, Worst and Most Unusual by Bruce Felton
and Mark Fowler.
“Worst College Campus: Imagine 1,400
well-scrubbed youngsters carrying biology textbooks and
hymnals, scurrying in and out of the abandoned hulls of an old
"World of Tomorrow" exhibit Disneyland or the '64 New York
World's Fair, and you'll have a fair picture of the
plastic-and-aluminum wonderland that is Oral Roberts
University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsans like to tell tourists
that "unless you've seen ORU, you haven't seen Tulsa,”
unaware, evidently, that not seeing Tulsa does have its
benefits. Just the same, the $50-million campus is worth
looking at if you are in the area, especially for the
200-foot-high "Prayer Tower,” which looks like nothing so much
as an upended vibrating dildo girdled with an inner
tube. It may well be America's ugliest religious
structure.”
When I read
something like that I want to see for myself if the source
material justifies such prose. In this case, I had been
waiting 9 years for the opportunity. 
Personally, I enjoyed wandering around the campus because the architecture is so unusual and because (2) ...
Although I have seen a geodesic dome before I do like the angles of the thin concrete arches that frame the sides of this one.
My favourite building is the John D. Messick Learning Resource Center (LRC) and this picture of the back side is the best one I found. (1)
