BOK Park Plaza

The BOK Park Plaza is a Contemporary skyscraper designed by Pickard Chilton, in association with Kendall/Heaton Associates, and built between 2015 and 2018, for a reported $270 million dollars, in Oklahoma City, OK.

Its precise street address is 499 West Sheridan Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2018 the BOK Park Plaza was awarded with the Mayor's Award for Outstanding Development .

The Union Bus Station, the Auto Hotel, the Black Hotel, and the Carpenter Square Theatre were demolished to make way for the new development.

However, in the annex structures, especially the north garage, Art Deco components and original elements from the former Union Bus Station, including the iconic sign, were incorporated, restored, and protected behind a glass ‘lantern’ on the facade..

Pickard Chilton was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Kendall/Heaton Associates.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the BOK Park Plaza a reality:

• Walter P. Moore in charge of Structural Engineering
• JE Dunn Construction as the Main Contractor
• Hines as the Main Developer
• Alvine Engineering in charge of MEP Engineering
• Clark Condon Associates in charge of Landscape Architecture

The BOK Park Plaza can be categorized as a Contemporary building.

The BOK Park Plaza uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features floor-to-ceiling light-tinted glass and silver-toned anodized mullions arranged both vertically and horizontally.

The ground floor, which includes a triple-height entrance hall, is enclosed by a glass wall that follows the same curtain wall design used on the tower’s facades, but in this case is recessed from the rest of the structure..