5 Peoria

Old red brick warehouses are like blue jeans – they look good with just about anything. Old red brick warehouses with huge sheets of glass and weathered plate steel done modern – that’s nothing short of New York chic. This chic aesthetic takes place in a part of Tulsa that has seen better days decades ago and is seeing them again – the Pearl District. The recent resurgence of this formerly depressed warehouse and machine shop area is attracting cool coffee houses, cafés, shops, apartments and condominiums, all within a short walk to a nearby urban park and manmade lake that anchor the district.

Weathered plate steel is used on this 1920’s office warehouse to extrude windows out towards the adjacent streets and frame the first floor retail entry and display glass. Adjacent to the old building is a new second level addition of living units, clad in the same weathered steel and supported on structural steel fins. The open space below creates covered parking for residents. The two buildings are seamed together with a second level corridor that accesses living units in the new addition as well as in the original building’s second level. A ground level glass box within the parking area encloses a floating steel stair and elevator for residents. The overall composition is fire and ice – hot and cool – New York and Oklahoma.