With The Citizen, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris offers a fresh take on downtown Oklahoma City’s art deco and neoclassical buildings

In Oklahoma City’s downtown district, a 12-story coworking space, members’ club, hotel, and tech start-up incubator designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) rises across the street from the Oklahoma City National Memorial, commemorating the 1995 domestic terrorist attack on the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Today, AHMM—an international studio with offices in London and Bristol, United Kingdom; Madrid, Spain; Melbourne and Sydney, Australia—has its U.S. home base in the tower’s ninth floor. AHMM was behind The Citizen’s core-and-shell design as well as the interiors. For AHMM cofounder Simon Allford, “Citizen is our American Gesamtkunstwerk—an essay on the benefits of the global exchange of ideas.”

The Citizen stands 168 feet tall, one foot for every life lost in the 1995 domestic terrorist attack. (Timothy Soar)

Architecturally speaking, AHMM responded to the site’s proximity to the Oklahoma City National Memorial in myriad ways. First and foremost, the building stands 168 feet tall, one foot for every life lost in the attack.

A colonnaded entrance is set far back from the street, creating a subtle backdrop for the memorial. The foyer, a banking hall, and cafe are located in what AHMM calls the “city room,” where visitors enter the mixed-use building.

Designers also took cues from Oklahoma City’s abundance of art deco architecture from the 1930s: The Citizen’s unitized aluminum and glass cladding system mimics the horizontals and verticals of neighboring buildings, AHMM said.

Plantings are mirrored by reflective glass. (Timothy Soar)
From the ground level, pedestrians experience the building’s vertical fins. (Timothy Soar)

A post-tensioned concrete frame structures the building, and the building core is placed along a party wall that divides the tower and an adjacent parking garage. Vertical circulation wraps the perimeter.

AHMM said this approach allows for large spans, maximized floor-to-soffit heights, and ensures long-term adaptability.

Concrete is left exposed to express “functional clarity,” and terrazzo and wood paneling line the floors and walls.

AHMM designed the interiors, as well as the core-and-shell. (Timothy Soar)
The interiors likewise are inspired by art deco architecture. (Timothy Soar)

Vertical fins regulate daylighting in the interiors, and suggest a sense of “sculptural depth.” Porthole windows puncture one of the facades, in response to the context’s art deco, postmodernist, and neoclassicist makeup. Inside, lounge spaces feature coffered ceilings, rounded archways, ceramic tilework, and parquet flooring—all homages to the past design influences furnishing and informing the building.

Wade Scaramucci, of AHMM, told AN the goal with The Citizen was to create a “modern day forum,” Scaramucci said last year, a “take on the 21st-century warehouse.”