KJ McNitt Construction
The K.J.McNitt building in Oklahoma City is an advertisement for the
simplicity, economy and expressiveness of tilt-wall concrete construction,
which just happens to be client Kelly McNitt’s specialty. The exterior
walls are precast concrete panels, twenty-four feet high and ten wide,
that have been finished in a variety of styles and textures: smoothed,
sandblasted, stained. The panels are separated by 8-inch glass slits,
which dramatize their lightness and thinness, and are braced by recycled
oilfield pipes, an appropriate analogy for Oklahoma. On the east wall,
the oil pipes are folded into the facade to frame a door; in the
parking lot they are pulled out to form the corners of an implied outdoor
room, complete with concrete floor and buffalo grass border. The same
spare esthetic prevails inside as well. Decks, joists and air ducts are
all exposed; the floors are scored concrete; the sheet-rock walls follow
the rhythm of the exterior panels, with the slotted windows providing
dramatic shafts of light.
