mdugger & Chris Hervochon:
Sorry, I missed your questions to me from about a week ago.
As for the aesthetic look of Oakmont's bunkering, particularly fairway, I would say it's very unique, maybe even one of a kind. Why? Good question but it may just relate to the Fownes family, particularly William (the son), as it's pretty clear to me that Oakmont, as much as any course anywhere, is an expression of personal opinion in so many ways--look, intent in play etc, etc! If the Fownes's intended to copy some architecture or some architectural prinicple, I'm really not aware of what that is!
I think I can see (from some Pine Valley material) that William Fownes was a man with a very strong will and very unique ideas about golf. He believed, as did some of his contemporaries and close friends (the Philadelphia School particularly), in very high demand architecture in some cases and on some courses, certainly Oakmont, his lifelong project.
Fownes was a very good player and clearly believed in super high testing of very good players. He believed in rewarding extremely good and clever play though. Fortunately or unfortunately, he also believed, as did his friend Crump, in really really penalizing anything less, even from good players.
They (Crump and Fownes) did depart from each other in certain instances such as Fownes's recommendation on the redesign of PVGC's 1st green. This was as much concept and principle as anything else.
But as to Chris's question of how the Oakmont bunkers relate to placement and the contours of the land---in both cases the Oakmont bunkering, through the green, is about as well and tough-placed in a center directed fashion as you can find on a golf course. Basically the overall bunker placement (through the green) with other supporting features counterbalances a good deal on the opposite sides of fairways with things like drainage swales (rough) etc and is super demanding.
The reasons it's super demanding is because some of the bunkering is placed in such a way as to filter the ball using fairway contours and slope directly into the fairway bunkering (often bunkering placed on the low side below sloping fairways). #13 is probably the best and most acute example of that. On many other holes the angles used with fairway and bunkering often accomplishes the same things altough those angle can be very subtle sometimes. The bunkering also accomplishes the same intensity often simply using psychology since recovering from most of the Oakmont fairway bunkers is often just a short shot of necessity due to their penal architecture.
Basically Oakmont is what I would call a "center directed" course strategically but inside that center direction is some of the most nuancy options concerning the bounce of the ball using little fairway contours and slope also speed.
Last night I was talking to D Moriarty about the differences in what he calls vertical options vs horizontal options. I call the same effect distance vs accuracy (width) options.
In this way Oakmont doesn't really use a lot of width options in its design--it is very much center directed. That kind of thing for the pros will clearly get down to much more club selection everywhere than decisions of which directions to play the ball.
But again the look of the bunkering at Oakmont is very unique, old fashioned looking and quite man-made looking in some cases (like the church pews).
I would like to answer your question about the bunkering greenside at Oakmont but that's something I didn't pay quite so much attention to when last there for a number of days. So I won't comment on that.
One thing Oakmont does do, though, happily, is consistently maintain about the most perfect "maintenance meld" for its overall design as one can find consistently anywhere.