Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill is an American architecture and engineering firm, also known by the acronym SOM. It was incorporated in Chicago by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings in 1936. John Merrill was added in 1939 as was Gordon Bunshaft, who was the principal designer at SOM for over 40 years and received the profession's highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 1988.

Under Bunshaft's vision, SOM was characterized from the beginning by its glass-box skyscrapers, a style that he pioneered. The study has built the tallest skyscrapers in the United States and has therefore permanently dedicated a good part of its collaborators to structural calculations. SOM's architecture is sober and elegant, without unnecessary ornamental elements. In his projects, the structural aspect of his buildings dominates, without giving them a technical appearance.

Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, Manhattan.

The three partners who give the firm its name have passed away. Since the studio was well organized, had good professionals and enjoyed high international prestige, it was able to continue working, remaining faithful to the architectural criteria of the three initial partners.

Throughout its more than 65 years of existence, SOM has received more than 800 architecture and design awards. In 1961 he received the first prize of the American Institute of Architecture awarded to an architectural firm, and won it again in 1996.

It currently has offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong and São Paulo.

Trajectory as pioneers of modern architecture

Manufacturers Trust Company Building at 510 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.

Air Force Academy Oath of Office

Many of SOM's postwar designs are recognized as icons of modern American architecture. The company's most influential early project was Lever House, completed in 1952 to become New York's first International Style office building. Built of glass and steel at a time when Park Avenue was lined with masonry buildings, Lever House ushered in a sleek modernist aesthetic that embodied the zeitgeist and influenced a generation of high-rise buildings. As the architectural historian Reyner Banham wrote in 1962: “He gave architectural expression to an age just as the era was dawning... Lever House was an uncontrollable success, imitated and sometimes understood throughout the Americanized world, and one of the New York looks”. In 1982, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Lever House as an official landmark.

John Hancock Center 2019

SOM's influential modernist work in New York included the Manufacturers Trust Company Building, completed in 1954 as the first International-Style bank building in the United States, and the Pepsi-Cola World Headquarters, completed in 1960.Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock called the Pepsi building "ultimate in refinement of proportion and elegance of materials," while New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable placed it &# 34;at the top of the list, with Seagram and Lever House, of the few modern landmarks in the city". The following year saw the completion of One Chase Manhattan Plaza (later 28 Liberty Street), the first International Style building to rise in New York City's Financial District. The project is notable for helping to turn the tide of a business exodus to Midtown Manhattan and the suburbs and reasserted Lower Manhattan as a viable business district after years of decline. SOM's design for 28 Liberty Street also transformed the crowded streetscape of the Financial District by creating a plaza surrounding the tower, a novel concept that would be adopted in many future projects.

Another key example of SOM's modernist legacy is in Colorado Springs, where SOM planned a campus for the US Air Force Academy. Built between 1958 and 1968, the campus broke with the traditions of West Point and Annapolis to become at the first US military academy designed in the modern style. The centerpiece of the campus is the Cadet Chapel, designed by architect Walter Netsch. The American Institute of Architects awarded the building its prestigious Twenty-Five Year Award, given to architectural works of lasting importance.

Willis Tower, usually known as the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Significant areas of action

Sustainable design

SOM has a long history of innovation in sustainable architecture and design. As far back as 1969, SOM founder Nathaniel Owings wrote: “Civilizations leave marks on Earth for which they are known and judged. To a large extent, the nature of its immortality is measured by how well its builders made their peace with the environment. (source: Nathaniel Owings, "The American Aesthetic", Harper & Row, 1969) This ethos has shaped the company's journey towards sustainable practices. An early example is the headquarters he designed for the Weyerhaeuser Company, completed in 1971, which has been called the “original green building” not only for its integration into the surrounding landscape, but also for its innovative use of efficient building systems. Another milestone in large-scale sustainable architecture was the completion of the US Census Bureau headquarters in 2007, the first federal office building to receive LEED certification. Like Weyerhaeuser, the campus's design works in concert with its natural surroundings and incorporates a variety of design strategies to reduce its environmental impact.

In 2015, SOM completed the first net-zero energy school building in New York City and one of the first worldwide. The Kathleen Grimm School for Leadership and Sustainability at Sandy Ground, Staten Island, has been honored for its sustainability performance by organizations including the American Institute of Architects, the Municipal Art Society, and the Urban Land Institute. SOM has been recognized for its research and experimentation with new energy saving and carbon reduction technologies, such as a wooden tower and a modified concrete slab design.

High Rise Innovation

In the 1970s, SOM pioneered a new era of skyscraper design with its work in Chicago, including the John Hancock Center (completed 1970) and Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), which became the tallest structure in the world upon its completion in 1973 and remained so for over 20 years. Both towers are the result of collaboration between architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, who is often considered the greatest structural engineer of the 20th century. Khan invented a tubular framing system that made it possible to build taller than ever before. This system has been adapted and is still used today for some of the world's most recent tallest buildings, including the 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa, designed by SOM and completed in 2010.

Innovation in digital design

In the 1960s and 1970s, SOM was an early leader in computer-aided design, developing in-house digital tools that preceded today's widely used CAD systems. This work quickly proved valuable in generating structural analysis tools that were adopted by Fazlur Khan and his engineering team, helping design projects such as the John Hancock Center.

The activity of an experimental research group at SOM known as the Computer Group exemplifies a particularly productive effort within the firm to incorporate technological research into its practice. During the 1970s and 1980s, members of the relatively small dedicated group lobbied to integrate improved data storage and analysis capabilities into various phases of the design process. Through these initiatives, SOM was able to identify the potential of computing not only to speed up the necessary computations, but also to introduce new ways of representing and sharing information. Just as structural engineering came to be seen early on at SOM as a means of generating, rather than simply realizing architectural ideas, with a concerted effort, computer science gained credibility within the firm, and eventually throughout the industry, as a catalyst for architectural innovation. In 1980, an internal team at SOM created Architecture Engineering Systems, a computer program that was used to study complex structural systems and energy demands. [21] This program is considered a precursor to the building information modeling (BIM) toolset now used by the profession.

Integration of art and architecture

For decades, many of SOM's projects have featured artwork by major artists. In many cases, the firm's architects and engineers played essential roles in the commissioning, engineering, and installation of the artworks, such as the Chicago Picasso, a 50-foot-tall steel sculpture in downtown city civic. Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Harry Bertoia, Richard Lippold, and Jean Dubuffet are among the artists whose work has been an integral part of SOM's projects. More recently, SOM architects and engineers have collaborated with artists such as James Turrell, Janet Echelman, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, James Carpenter and Jaume Plensa.

Urban design and planning

Broadgate Tower

Since the company's founding, SOM has led large-scale urban design and planning projects. Many of these projects have played enduring roles in the development of cities and urban areas in the United States and around the world, including London, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Denver, and Portland. SOM's practice has made influential contributions to urban design approaches such as transit-oriented development, overbuilding strategies, and sustainable urbanism. In 1942, the US Army Corps of Engineers contracted SOM for a highly classified project: the planning of Oak Ridge. In 1945, the city was home to 75,000 people. The work at Oak Ridge prepared SOM to take on the large-scale planning and architectural projects that would define the postwar era.

For more than 20 years, SOM was involved in the development of a master plan for the National Mall in Washington, DC In 1962, President John F. Kennedy appointed Nathaniel Owings as chairman of the Pennsylvania Avenue redesign council, and the resulting 1966 Washington Mall Master Plan laid the foundation for a dynamic, welcoming, and pedestrian-friendly venue. A second master plan developed in 1973, called for the construction of major cultural facilities, including the National Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden.

In Baltimore in the 1960s, SOM played a critical role in preventing the destruction of the city's historic districts and Inner Harbor to make way for the planned construction of an elevated highway. As chairman of a team to develop an alternate plan, Nathaniel Owings convinced the Federal Highway Administration to sign off on a plan to reroute the highway. It was eventually built around the harbor and the historic Federal Hill district, saving these irreplaceable neighborhoods.

In the 1970s, SOM collaborated with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin to plan and design the Portland Transit Mall. The goals were to revitalize downtown Oregon, encourage the use of public transportation, and create walkable streets. The Transit Mall helped change the perception of downtown Portland. As one of the first projects of its kind in the United States, it helped usher in an era of people-first urban landscape design. Another important commission in the 1970s was the Boston Transportation Planning Review, a metropolitan redesign of all of Boston's highway and transit infrastructure.

One World Trade Center

Starting in the 1980s, SOM planned the design and construction of Canary Wharf in London. Intended to accommodate a thriving financial sector and revitalize London's old Docklands, the plan included more than 20 building sites and a host of public spaces and amenities. The plan also provided for a strong transport network, including a light rail station connecting to the London Underground. The massive scale of the project led to the opening of SOM's London office in 1986. The company's work in Canary Wharf continued into the new millennium, with the completion of Five Canada Square in 2002. In central London, the The opportunity to build on rail lines near Liverpool Street station prompted the construction of Broadgate, a new shopping district. SOM designed the master plan and, over three decades, designed several of the 14 buildings on the site. To build high-rise structures atop one of the city's busiest stations and its railway station, SOM's structural engineering team devised a platform above the tracks to allow for various configurations of buildings on top. Exchange House, completed in 1990, is a building that acts as a bridge across the tracks. In 2008, Broadgate Tower, the tallest building in the district, was completed. SOM also designed public space improvements for the area.

SOM designed the master plan for Chicago's Millennium Park, which opened in 2004 and has become one of the most visited attractions in the city. Built on bus lanes, parking lots, and a train yard, Millennium Park can be considered the largest rooftop garden in the world. Beneath the large lawn, two new parking levels were built, bus stops were added, and train stations, including Millennium Station, were renovated and expanded. The project revitalized a previously blighted downtown site and marked the completion of Chicago planner Daniel Burnham's 100-year vision for the area.

In Denver, SOM was commissioned to expand and transform the city's historic Union Station into a major regional hub. 20 acres of former rail yards have been converted into a transit-oriented urban district hosting light rail, pedestrian, bicycle, and bus routes, as well as commuter and intercity rail. Completed in 2014, the project has stimulated more than $3.5 billion in private investment in the surrounding district.

Members

SOM is structured as a corporation. Current partners and consulting partners are: Mustafa Abadan, Stephen Apking, William Baker, David Childs, Thomas Behr, Keith Boswell, Carrie Byles, Larry Chien, Leo Chow, Brant Coletta, Chris Cooper, Paul Danna, Michael Duncan, Scott Duncan, Philip Enquist, Laura Ettelman, Xuan Fu, TJ Gottesdiener, Gary Haney, Craig Hartman, Kent Jackson, Colin Koop, Brian Lee, Kenneth Lewis, Adam Semel, Jonathan Stein, and Douglas Voigt.

650 California Street, San Francisco

Notable founders and architects

Gordon Bunshaft, who served as design lead at SOM for more than 40 years, received the profession's highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 1988. Notable architects associated with SOM include: TJ Gottesdiener, Edward Charles Bassett, Natalie de Blois, Gordon Bunshaft, David Childs, Robert Diamant, Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, Gary Haney, Craig W. Hartman, Gertrude Kerbis, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Lucien Lagrange, Walter Netsch, Larry Oltmanns, Eszter Pécsi, Brigitte Peterhans, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Adrian Smith, and Marilyn Jordan Taylor.

Selected projects

This is a list of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's main projects.

7 World Trade Center, New York.

Shaklee Terraces, San Francisco, completed 1979 with a flush aluminum and glass facade and rounded corners.