Legend of the Town Centre - Architecture as Data 

OSU Faculty Research Assistant

As a faculty research assistant with Dr. Professor Jared Macken on The Legend of the Town Center: Ordinary Form, Radical Ideology, I conducted 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, oral histories, and non-physical forms of data.

Through extensive research, we reconstructed these forms, with my role focused on translating historical data into visual and physical representations. I curated digital models and vector drawings in Rhino, which we converted into laser-cut paper models. This process helped us return lost architectural forms into a physical space and offered tactile ways of re-engaging with a built environment left in the past.

The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on how town planning and main streets shape civic identity and cultural memory. It was a rewarding challenge to bridge research and design in this way, deepening my understanding of the role built environments play as engines for contextual memory. Even when places disappear; their stories, forms, and meanings continue to echo through time.