The Legend of the Town Center: The Main Street and its Architectural Form

by Jared Macken

This semester the ARCH4100 course focused on the main streets (and similar urban forms) of Oklahoma and studied the way individual structures link with  other individual structures to form this ubiquitous collective structure. Our research discovered the ways that even the shrinking small town can contribute to architecture’s discourse on the city.

For instance, the axon in the poster above depicts the Paseo Arts District in Oklahoma City. The pink areas show the unique miniature plazas or niches created by little setbacks in the aligned storefronts. These niches are cultural spaces that help transform Paseo into an arts district.