Lilly and his team discovered metal panels and drywall covering large wooden doors on the south facade. “Most of them were five-panel doors with divided lites up above that basically accordion-open,” Lilly explains. “Those large openings would open from column to column. When we uncovered them, we incorporated them into the design documents and they have been recreated exactly like they were.”
To create flexible desk space for the open-office layout of 36°N, as well as link up six conference rooms, a cable-management system was necessary that didn’t require trenching or drilling into the 100-year-old concrete structure. In-carpet wireways were installed throughout the open-office workspace and conference rooms. The wireways provide workers access to power, audiovisual and data connections. As 36°N continues to grow and evolve, the ADA-compliant cabling easily can be reconfigured.
Lilly notes:“We didn’t want to have to soft cut large blocks of concrete to be able to get the data for the project to work, so the wireways were a great alternative to not having to do that from a timeline standpoint and also from a cost standpoint.”
Acoustics also were important to the stakeholders because of the addition of apartments upstairs with potentially 24-hour facilities below. An acoustic vibration isolation system was installed beneath the concrete slab to provide separation between the apartments and the tenants on the first floor. “Having a lot of people working in a large, open space also makes acoustics critical,” Lilly adds. “We worked with an acoustic consultant, who recommended absorptive panels on the ceiling. The carpet and fabrics and other materials we picked for the furniture all work in concert to provide the adequate absorption to an otherwise all-hard-surface environment.”
The George Kaiser Family Foundation and Lilly Architects also were rehabilitating the Fox Building, which was built in 1906 and is the Brady Arts District’s oldest building, during the Universal Ford Building’s retrofit. Consequently, the team created one chilled- and hot-water central plant to heat and cool both buildings.
“We used the roof of the Universal Ford Building because it’s all cast-in-place concrete, so it had the structural capacity to locate the equipment there,” Lilly notes. “We piped down the alley to the Fox Building to utilize that same system. There’s built-in redundancy in case one of the units has an issue. The entire alley was redone, as well, so it worked out well.”
If These Walls Could Talk
Construction at the Universal Ford Building took about 18 months and was completed at the end of 2015. To Lilly, the job was particularly significant because it was the first major project for Lilly Architects after becoming an entrepreneur himself. “I think just the fact that it ties into Tulsa’s history not only as an older building on Main Street, but the fact that it was a Ford dealership and how transformational the Model T was to the world and how it affected how our cities work,” he says. “I think it’s a great thing to highlight this building and the fact that it does have a strong connectivity to a company and an idea that really transformed the world.”
Now, the Universal Ford Building is reinvented for another generation of economic engines.
Retrofit Team
Architect: Lilly Architects, Tulsa, Okla.
Acoustical Engineer: JEAcoustics, Austin, Texas
Civil and Structural Engineer: Wallace Engineering, Tulsa
M/E/P Engineer: MPW Engineering, Tulsa
Owner’s Representative: Stonebridge Group, Tulsa
Materials
Carpet: Design Journey, Chok Tile, color 99760, from Shaw Contract
Base: Standard Cove, color black, from Roppe
Paint: Alabaster SW7008 from Sherwin-Williams
Countertops: Solid surface, color deep anthracite, from Corian
In-carpet Wireways: Connectrac
Ceiling: Tectum Inc.
Lighting: Axis, Cree, Juno, Tech Lighting and Tivoli
Before Photos
Credit: Photitect LLC
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