Light is the medium and the message at Ackerman McQueen Advertising – natural light, artificial light, light as insight and idea. The agency occupies a 1917 office tower in downtown Tulsa that contains 18-foot ceilings, massive concrete columns and cross-braces and dramatic skylights.
In a 1992 renovation, Elliott + Associates turned the 12th floor into a gigantic stage set for creative ideas. Daylight enters the space from skylights and clerestories; the company logo appears as light on the cross-braces in the lobby; a path of carpet runs from the elevator to the offices like an unfolding concept.
The architects expanded on the theater theme in their 1999 design for a new video conference center on the first floor of the same building. A public corridor runs through the space, with offices, conference rooms and a cyclorama on one side, a library and additional offices on the other, and a transparent blue box in the middle. In this space, the heart of Ackerman McQueen, the line between inside and outside, observer and participant is deliberately blurred. People outside the box resemble an audience at a movie while those inside become actors in a creative drama. The space is kinetic and atmospheric, with light entering through clerestories; towers and rope-like filaments hang from ceiling fixtures.
The focal point of the room is the gigantic video wall, where ideas are set in motion. The combination of light and shadow and movement creates a spatial portrait of a company in the forefront of 21st century communications.
