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Childhood memories of Disney World helped influence Kirsten Armstrong’s (Architecture MPhil 2015) interest in the built environment. She is now enjoying a career as an architectural historian.

Protecting the past in the face of developments for the future forms the basis for Kirsten’s work. Her career has ranged from working with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to ensure that their work does not impact any historically significant buildings objects or sites, to guiding residents of the mountain town of Aspen, Colorado in making changes to their homes while preserving the historic aspects of the town.

Kirsten enjoys learning about the stories, sometimes buried, that accompany the places she works on. While working with FDOT on protecting a cemetery located next to a road project, she discovered that the local community organised an annual cemetery clean-up and picnic, a tradition that had been upheld since the 19th century.

On another occasion, working on a historic bar, she discovered that it had been part of the ‘Chitlin Circuit’, a series of venues where Black entertainers were able to perform during the period of segregation in the US.

“These are the stories you don’t really see as you’re driving through,” she says. “To me, it’s the small moments. I get to look into people’s lives and see the communities that they build.

“There was a point in my college career where I told myself that I never wanted to do this kind of work, that I wanted to stay in academia and be an expert in my field. What I didn’t realise at the time was that being in cultural resource management allowed me the flexibility to learn about something new every day.

“I’m not an expert in any one part of American architectural history at this point, but going into those rabbit holes makes my work really interesting and unique.”

Kirsten’s current role is at Argonne National Laboratory, a research centre in Lemont, Illinois, where she works with the Air Force and other organisations to produce an inventory of their historic resources and communicate their stories. Military buildings are often transitory and are demolished after their intended mission is complete, so Kirsten feels it is important to keep alive records of their operations.

Growing up, Kirsten moved home multiple times with her family, sparking an early interest in how space and community interact.

She adds: “As a child, having to learn how to navigate new communities and having that idea of home change every couple of years is a really interesting crash course in understanding how you feel in a space.

“At the time, I didn’t have the language for it, but it really informed what was to come later.”

Also among Kirsten’s influences were visits to Disney World in Florida.

“I think there’s a bit of whimsy in building communities and Disney World really cranks the dial on that,” says Kirsten.

“Walt Disney created a place where you can travel the world and your imagination all in one afternoon. As a kid, that set design and the employees there who wrap the stories around that set really changed the game for me.”

But it was not until partway through her undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania that Kirsten settled on studying architectural history. From there she came to Gonville & 91ֱ�� College to pursue an MPhil in the subject, the architecture of 91ֱ�� being one factor that informed her choice of College.

Kirsten says: “Coming to Cambridge as an international student, picking a College is a bit of a leap of faith. The reason I chose 91ֱ�� as my top choice was the Library, as well as all the history of the Old Courts and its Gates.

“It really makes you feel like you’re part of something larger.”