LAUNDRY OFFICE

SPRING 2020 WITH NORMAN KELLEY

In February of 2020, our studio visited Bruce Goff’s Guaranty Laundry Building located along the historic Route 66 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is a model of the interior office within the building as-observed and experienced on that day.

It appears grandiose from the street, an imposing box with a wide yellow brick facade, striped with horizontals that seem to stretch to infinity. Its weathered factory windows declare it as industrial. But upon entering through the building’s front door, we are met with a pristine lobby, floors clad with polished terrazzo, walls and doors almost freshly painted in bright colors. This microcosm of domesticity stands in stubborn contrast against the building proper in which it sits. In here small and empty, yet furnished and orderly, out there vast and chaotically populated, yet stripped bare.

The prevailing newness of the entrance space makes all the more glaring its deteriorations, beginning with a blatant peeling of the wall surface across from the entrance to reveal a plastered wall. Treatment of space fluctuates heavily from room to room. As we go further from the entrance into the space, more signs of oldness begin to reveal themselves. More peels, this time revealing brick; deteriorating paint, rendering visible multiple layers of personal color choices over the years; and in the final room in the sequence, stripped concrete slab flooring, terracotta tile walls, and fully exposed beams above.