Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer John Merrill. The firm opened its second office, in New York City, in 1937 and has since expanded internationally, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, and Dubai.
Gordon Bunshaft,, was an American architect, a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined the firm in 1937 and remained with it for more than 40 years. His notable buildings include Lever House in New York, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 140 Broadway, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Branch Bank in New York.
The year 1957 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Beijing Financial Street (BFS) is where Chinese regulatory agencies are located. It is located inside Beijing's innermost 2nd Ring Road. According to the 13th 5 year plan, Beijing Financial Street will be positioned more towards a regulatory agencies' precinct.
Florence Marguerite Knoll Bassett was an American architect, interior designer, furniture designer, and entrepreneur who has been credited with revolutionizing office design and bringing modernist design to office interiors. Knoll and her husband, Hans Knoll, built Knoll Associates into a leader in the fields of furniture and interior design. She worked to professionalize the field of interior design, fighting against gendered stereotypes of the decorator. She is known for her open office designs, populated with modernist furniture and organized rationally for the needs of office workers. Her modernist aesthetic was known for clean lines and clear geometries that were humanized with textures, organic shapes, and colour.
The Inland Steel Building is a skyscraper located at 30 W. Monroe Street in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the city's defining commercial high-rises of the post-World War II era of modern architecture. Its principal designers were Bruce Graham and Walter Netsch of the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architecture firm. The building is managed and leased by MB Real Estate. The Inland Steel Building was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1998.
Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, is a public hospital operated by the state of Connecticut to treat people with mental illness. It was historically known as Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane. It is a 100-acre (40 ha) historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Insurance Company of North America (INA) is the oldest stock insurance company in the United States, founded in Philadelphia in 1792. It was one of the largest American insurance companies of the 19th and 20th centuries before merging with Connecticut General Life to form CIGNA in 1982, and was acquired by global insurer ACE Limited in 1999.
The campus of Northwestern University encompasses two campuses in Evanston, Illinois and Chicago, Illinois, United States. There is an additional campus located in Doha, Qatar which offers bachelor's and master's degrees. The original Evanston campus has witnessed approximately 150 buildings rise on its 240 acres (0.97 km2) since the first building opened in 1855. The downtown Chicago campus of approximately 25 acres (100,000 m2) is home to the schools of medicine and law was purchased and constructed in the 1920s and 1930s.
Nathaniel Alexander Owings was an American architect, a founding partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which became one of the largest architectural firms in the United States and the world. Owings viewed skyscrapers as his firm's specialty. His reputation rested on his ability to be what he called "the catalyst," the person in his firm who ironed out differences among clients, contractors and planning commissions.
The AIA Tower, formerly the Philamlife Tower, is an office skyscraper located in Makati, Philippines. It is owned and developed by Philam Properties Corporation, the real estate arm of the Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company. Standing at 200 metres, it is currently the 7th-tallest building in Makati, and is the 14th-tallest building in the country and Metro Manila as well. The building has 48 floors above ground, and 5 basement levels for parking. It is also the current headquarters of AIA Philippines since 2023, which will be renamed to AIA Tower.
The Reynolds Metals Company International Headquarters is an International Style building complex set in a composed landscape in Henrico County, near Richmond, Virginia, completed in 1958. The low-rise Executive Office Building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, in collaboration with Richmond landscape architect Charles F. Gillette. The headquarters complex has been cited as a prototype for modern suburban office development. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It is the headquarters for the Altria Group, formerly known as the Philip Morris Companies, Inc. The property is owned by the University of Richmond.
John Ogden Merrill was an American architect and structural engineer. He was chiefly responsible for the design and construction of the United States Air Force Academy campus and for the development of Oak Ridge, Tennessee where the atomic bomb was developed. He was a partner of the international architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Edward Charles "Chuck" Bassett (1921–1999) was an American architect based in San Francisco.
Natalie Griffin de Blois was an American architect. Entering the field in 1944, she became one of the earliest prominent woman in the male-dominated profession. She was a partner for many years in the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Her notable works include the Pepsi Cola Headquarters, Lever House, and the Union Carbide Building in New York City, the Equitable Building in Chicago, the low-rise portions of the Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, and the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company Headquarters in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Several of de Blois' buildings are among the tallest woman-designed buildings in the world. She later taught architecture at the University of Texas in the 1980s and 1990s.
Gillette Ridge Golf Club is a public golf course located in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Located on the Cigna headquarters campus, it is the only public Arnold Palmer designed course in the Northeast. Cigna Insurance currently owns the property and has Arnold Palmer Golf Management running the daily operations.
The Henry Ford II World Center, also commonly known as the Ford World Headquarters and popularly known as the Glass House, is the administrative headquarters for Ford Motor Company, a 12-story, glass-faced office building designed to accommodate a staff of approximately 3,000. The building is located at 1 American Road at Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, Michigan, near Ford's historic Rouge plant, Greenfield Village, the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn's Henry Ford Centennial Library, and Fair Lane, Henry Ford's personal estate.
Marianne Strengell was an influential Finnish-American Modernist textile designer in the twentieth century. Strengell was a professor at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1942, and she served as department head from 1942 to 1962. She was able to translate hand-woven patterns for mechanized production, and pioneered the use of synthetic fibers.
Margo Grant Walsh is an American interior designer also known as a collector of silver serving pieces. As a designer of workplaces, first for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and later for Gensler, her clients included companies such as Goldman Sachs, Pennzoil, and Shearman & Sterling. Grant was inducted into the Interior Design magazine Hall of Fame in 1987, and has been described by the IIDA as "one of the most powerful and influential women in American architecture and interior design", and a pioneer for both women in the field and the profession itself.
The American Republic Insurance Company Headquarters Building is a historic building located in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, United States. It was completed in 1965 for the insurance company's headquarters and it continues to serve that purpose. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
