ABSTRACT
Stephen Brockman of Deborah Berke Partners led the team to transform a 1916 Ford assembly plant, originally designed by architect Albert Kahn, into a 21c Museum Hotel in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The adaptive reuse of this 188,000 square-foot historic industrial building includes 14,000 square feet of art gallery and public spaces that serve to inform future development and to allow the hotel to act as an incubator for the area. The building's vastness provided an opportunity for visual play between smaller volumes located within the structure. Cuts in the structural frame bring multiple deep light wells into the volume and transform the dark space of the corridors into rooms unto themselves that are in contrast with the brightness of the light wells. The light wells act as beacons and orientation devices allowing daylight and the structural bays to help navigate through the building, giving clues about the time of day, helping orient the traveler.
