SOM, previously Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, is a Chicago-based architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. In 1939, they were joined by engineer John O. Merrill. The firm opened its second office, in New York City, in 1937 and has since expanded, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, and Dubai.
Bruce John Graham was a Colombian-born Peruvian-American architect. Graham built buildings all over the world and was deeply involved with evolving the Burnham Plan of Chicago. Among his most notable buildings are the Inland Steel Building, the Willis Tower, and the John Hancock Center. He was also responsible for planning the Broadgate and Canary Wharf developments in London.
David Magie Childs is an American architect and chairman of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He is the architect of the new One World Trade Center in New York City.
TheAl Hamra Tower is a skyscraper in Kuwait City, Kuwait. It is the tallest building in Kuwait. Construction of the skyscraper started in 2005. It was completed in 2011. Designed by architectural firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Ramshir and Callison, it is the tallest curved concrete skyscraper in the world, and the thirty-sixth tallest building in the world at 414 m (1,358 ft).
Adrian D. Smith is an American architect. He designed the world's tallest structure, Burj Khalifa, as well as the building projected to surpass it, the Jeddah Tower. A long-time principal of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he founded his own architectural partnership firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture in Chicago in 2006. Among his other projects, he was the senior architect for Central Park Tower in New York City, Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, and Zifeng Tower in Nanjing.
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG), an architecture firm and design firm based in Chicago, is engaged in the design and development of energy-efficient and sustainable architecture. AS+GG designs buildings, cities, masterplans and components of these, for an international clientele, with projects located throughout the world. The primary uses of these designs are civic, commercial, cultural, hospitality, residential and mixed-use. AS+GG also specializes in supertall skyscrapers, such as the Jeddah Tower, which will overtake the Burj Khalifa as the world's tallest building when completed.
Craig W. Hartman, FAIA, is an architect and Design Partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's San Francisco, California, office. His most prominent work includes the Cathedral of Christ the Light for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland. It is the first cathedral in the world built entirely in the 21st century. He also completed the International Terminal at the San Francisco International Airport, Harvard University's Northwest Science Building, and the new US Embassy in Beijing.
Louis Skidmore was an American architect, co-founder of the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and recipient of the AIA Gold Medal.
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.
William Frazier Baker is an American structural engineer known for engineering the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building/man-made structure and a number of other well known buildings. He is currently a structural engineering partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (SOM).
T. J. Gottesdiener is an architect and managing partner of the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). A graduate of Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, Gottesdiener joined SOM in 1980 and was made Partner in 1994. He lives with his wife in New York City; they have one son.
Ross Wimer, FAIA is an American architect, known for integrating the rigor and logic of engineering into his designs. Until October 2013, he was a design director in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP. During his tenure at SOM from 1995 to 2013, he created architectural projects in over 20 cities on five continents. Mr. Wimer is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He currently leads AECOM's architecture practice in the Americas.
George J. Efstathiou, FAIA, RIBA is an American architect of Greek descent. George joined Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, LLP (SOM) in 1974, where he served as Managing Partner and later Consulting Partner in the Chicago office until 2016. He is currently leading the consulting practice of Efstathiou Consulting LLC which serves clients in the architecture, planning, interiors design as well as others in the real estate and corporate communities.
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.
Natalie Griffin de Blois was an American architect. Entering the field in 1944, she became one of the earliest prominent women 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.
Gertrude Lempp Kerbis was an American modernist architect. Kerbis' education includes studying at Wright Junior College, University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois, Harvard University, and Illinois Institute of Technology. She studied under and worked for several significant modernists of her day, including Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, and Carl Koch. Kerbis worked at Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill and C.F. Murphy Associates before establishing her own firm, Lempp Kerbis, in Chicago 1967. Her work entails that interior design can also be viewed as architecture and not just the aesthetic of a space. She was a lead designer in several major works of American modernism, including the Lustron house for a MoMA competition, Mitchell Hall at the US Air Force Academy, the Seven Continents Restaurant at the O'Hare International Airport Rotunda, and the Skokie Public Library in Skokie, IL. Kerbis founded the Chicago Women in Architecture group in 1973. She was a member of the American Institute of Architects, and notably became an AIA Fellow in 1970.
Marilyn Jordan Taylor is an American architect, who has been a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill since the early 1980s and served as its first female chairman. She specializes in urban architectural projects and designed the master plan for the Manhattanville expansion, the Consolidated Edison East River Greenway as well as airports from the John F. Kennedy International Airport terminal 4 expansion to the SkyCity at the Hong Kong International Airport. Between 2008 and 2016, she served as the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
Gary Paul Haney FRIBA, FAIA is an American architect, a design partner in the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Haney's approach draws heavily on environmental modeling techniques, deep materials research, and advanced building information modeling (BIM) technologies. Buildings on which he was lead designer include the supertall Al Hamra Tower in Kuwait City and civic buildings in the United States including two Public Safety Answering Centers in New York City and the United States Census Bureau headquarters and the redesign of the National Museum of American History, both in Washington, D.C.
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.
