Boley, Oklahoma - Faculty Research Assistant

I worked as a faculty research assistant with Dr. Professor Jared Macken on The Legend of the Town Center: Ordinary Form, Radical Ideology, a research series examining historical town typologies in Oklahoma. Many of these places no longer exist in their original form, surviving only through archival materials, photographs, maps, and oral histories.

Through extensive research, we reconstructed these forms, and my role focused on translating that historical data into visual representations. I created digital models and line drawings in Rhino, which were then converted into laser-cut 3D paper models. This process helped us bring lost architectural forms back into physical space and offered a tactile way to re-engage with the built environment of the past.

The exhibition invited visitors to reflect on how town plans and main streets shape civic identity and cultural memory. It was a rewarding challenge to bridge research and design in this way, and it deepened my understanding of how built environments carry contextual memory. Even when places disappear, their stories, forms, and meanings continue to echo through time.