The Logan

Project Type: Historic Preservation 

Size: 13,680 square feet

Client: Brent Swift 

Contractor: Brent Swift 

Completed in 1929, The Logan building stands as one of the only historic multi-story apartments in the college town of Norman, Oklahoma. The building has set a significant precedent in the city by proving that student apartments can peacefully co-exist with single family housing in the urban core. Though the building was abandoned in the 1990’s, a new owner and architect were able to see beyond the accumulated jumble of ill-conceived modifications and dilapidation to uncover the value of this architectural gem.

The designer’s took inspiration from the stereometric massing of the building to inform the tax-credit driven renovation of it’s interior. Thus, instead of expressing partitions and millwork as a series of planes, they manipulated them to form orthogonal volumes from which they carved out functional pockets. By virtue of this subtractive formal logic, the modern insertions hold their own against the visual weight and muscularity of their masonry surrounds. 

Respectful of history without becoming subservient to it, the renovated interiors allude to an era when structural elements had not yet been engineered down to their skeletal frames. The design for the Logan intentionally blurs the line between firmness and delight by finding pleasure in the architecture’s solidly.

Photographs by Tim Hursley and Brandon Snider

*Completed as Butzer Gardner Architects