Off Center: Notes on the Periphery

Off Center is an ongoing typological and geospatial research project on the multiple centers of the United States, conducted by architectural scholars and faculty of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Architecture Alaina Read Griffin and Cody Tyler Schueller.

The Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States, located 3 miles outside of Lebanon, Kansas, was established in 1918 by the United States Geological Survey as, “the point where a plane map of the 48 states would balance if it were of uniform thickness.” Its commemorative park, established in 1941, has since changed stewardship and transformed into an American roadside attraction with four primary structures as noted by Google Maps: the Historical Landmark, Picnic Pavilion, Outdoor Barbecue Grill, and the U.S. Center Chapel.

The reconnaissance documentation of the geographic center, undertaken in March of 2026, attempts to position it as the tangible intersection of geospatial methods that mapped the continent, the networks that service it, and the cultural norms that evolved as a result. The four specific architectural structures of the site are coaxed from the large-scale modernist grid and emerge (perhaps unintentionally) as postmodern symbols typifying rural America.

In the exhibition Off Center, on view at the MAS Context Reading Room, photographs, models, drawings, and writings reinterpret the complicated relationship between geometry, symbol, and nation-building in the culturally remote, yet geographically central area in and around Lebanon, Kansas. The seemingly straightforward mathematical equation of center-finding on a gridded landscape becomes near impossible due to the shifting boundaries of national territories, private property, and civilian access; thus, the viable centers for the United States have multiplied, forming a complex constellation rather than a single point. It is in this scalar and contextual fluctuation that the Geographic Center becomes Off Center.