An early proponent of the International Style, the architectural firm of Skidmore,

Owings and Merrill (SOM) was best noted for its technical innovations in skyscraper design, especially during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The “glass box” aesthetic, derived

from Mies van der Rohe, for SOM became an experiment in which, although the general style and form remained quite consistent and even somewhat bland, subtle modifications and structural enhancements were progressively undertaken. SOM’s version of corporate architecture dominated the field of high-rise building during this period, even after competing up-and-coming firms introduced more progressive design concepts and seemingly left SOM a dinosaur living off past laurels. Yet owing to its vast resources, stability, and reputation, the firm was able to maintain a consistently strong position with corporate clients, even after the retirement of the founding partners and key designers.

Founded in Chicago in 1936, SOM emerged during troubled economic times and with few early building projects. Law-renceburg, Indiana, native Louis Skidmore (1897–1962) graduated with an architectural degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1924. After working for Maginnius and Walsh for two years, Skidmore won the prestigious Rotch Traveling Fellowship in 1926 and spent the next three years in Europe. While in Paris, he met and married Eloise Owings, sister of his future partner Nathaniel Owings (1903–84). Owings, a native of Indianapolis, had attended the architectural school at the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1921. After becoming ill and passing up an appointment to West Point, Owings eventually graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1927. The first major work of the brothers-in-law was for the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago, of which Skidmore was named assistant to the general manager. Their collaborative effort consequently led to the opening of a second office in New York in 1937, and a partnership strengthened by the addition in 1939 of another MIT graduate, John Merrill (1896–1975). Merrill, born in St. Paul, Minnesota, had attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison for two years before joining the U.S. Army during World War I. After his graduation from MIT, Merrill had worked in Chicago for Granger and Bollenbacher and had done some work for the U.S. Housing Administration.

Even though projects were few during the pre-World War II period, the firm’s capability to skillfully provide both solid architectural and engineering design led to a major commission in 1942. SOM was chosen to plan and design on 60,000 acres in eastern Tennessee an entire community, Oak Ridge, as part of the U.S. government’s secret nuclear production program. In this town, which eventually grew from a population of zero to 75,000 by its completion in 1946, the production of uranium for the Manhattan Project occurred. After the war, an increasing number of projects began flowing in, and the firm gained a reputation for proficient if not extraordinary design work. It was the personal and professional relationships developed by the founding partners during this era that led to substantial work later and wide recognition for their planning abilities. In that context, Owings was appointed chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission from 1948 to 1951.

The firm’s reputation was elevated to a new level with its first major skyscraper commission, the highly acclaimed Lever House (1951) in New York City, designed by Gordon Bunshaft (1909–90) for the Lever Brothers Soap Company. The 24-story green glass curtain-walled and stainless-steel structure reflected in its design not only New York’s changing zoning laws that now permitted slab skyscrapers without setbacks but also the emergence of corporate modernism in the United States. Here, the form of Le Corbusier met the surface treatment of Mies van der Rohe, resulting in a modestly scaled structure in sharp contrast with the solid masonry of its neighbors.

SOM followed up the Lever House with another corporate commission, the Inland Steel Building (1958) in Chicago, one of the first high-rise buildings constructed in the Windy City after the Depression. With Walter Netsch (1920–) as chief designer, this 19- story glass box with accompanying 25-story stainless-steel service tower exemplifies Miesian abstraction. The architects separated the service core from the office block through a stark contrast between metal and glass sheathing. Soon a trademark of SOM, it was repeated most notably in the Crown Zellerbach Building (1959) in San Francisco. The firm replicated the glass box skyscraper model in buildings of varying heights, including the Manufacturers’ Trust Company (1954), the Union Carbide Building (1960), and Chase Manhattan Bank (1961), all in New York. In 1961, the awarding of the AIA’s first Architecture Firm Award solidified SOM’s position as a premier architectural firm.

During the 1970s, the firm reacted to changing economic conditions that required multi- purpose megastructures, literally vertical cities in the sky. Two of its best-known structures of this type were constructed in Chicago, both designed by Bruce Graham (1925–) and engineered by Fazlur Khan (1929–82). The John Hancock Center (1970) is by far the most satisfying. This multi-purpose 100-story structure of black anodized aluminum with tinted bronze glass rises 1,107 feet as a single tapered shaft. It combines retail, commercial, and residential functions into one colossal building. In order to combat wind and gravity loads, large cross bracing was used on the building’s exterior, a technique that had been employed slightly earlier by SOM in the Alcoa Building (1968) in San Francisco, although there to provide stability against seismic disturbances, not wind pressure. The cross bracing at the John Hancock Center became the building’s decoration, its exoskeleton exploited in a very sculptural manner.

The Sears Tower (1974) in Chicago was for many years the tallest building in the world at 1,454 feet. The black aluminum sheathing and dark smoked glass, without the benefit of even the smallest degree of sculptural articulation, exhibits coldness and a lack of human scale or interaction. Still, the general aesthetic of both the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center can be best understood within the context of contemporary min- imalist sculpture and viewed as a continuation of SOM’s exploration of Miesian ideals.

While the firm’s skyscraper commissions progressively increased in the 1960s and 1970s, other types of projects also came its way, most significantly the campus design and buildings for the United States Air Force Academy (1962) in Colorado Springs. The school’s Cadet Chapel offered SOM a rare opportunity to design a religious structure, and Netsch responded with a unique approach, constructing three chapels (one Protestant, one Jewish, and one Catholic, each of a varying aesthetic) under one roof. Certainly one of the most expressionistic and symbolic of SOM’s works, the outward appearance abstractly references forms associated with aircraft and flying. Shortly after this commission, SOM began working on another campus plan, this time for the University of Illinois at Chicago Center (1965).

The firm was not restricted to skyscraper or campus planning projects. Indeed, SOM’s work spanned the entire range of architectural forms. Some of its key designs include the technically sophisticated McMath Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak (1962) in Tucson, Arizona, where a cooled mixture of glycol and water circulates through a specially designed “skin” that absorbs the sun’s rays and prevents the generation of disruptive thermal currents on the telescope’s surface. The environmentally conscious Weyerhaeuser Headquarters (1971) in Tacoma, Washington, with its five long horizontal ivy-covered terraces, contains the same amount of square footage as a 35-story skyscraper, approximately 354,000 square feet. The Haj Terminal (1982) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was designed using a Teflon-coated fiberglass membrane in forms that references the tents set up by the million-plus pilgrims passing through the airport during the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. Bunshaft’s three-story concrete Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974) in Washington, D.C., devoted to housing modern art, appears as a modernist’s response to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, lifted up on massive pilotis as per the Le Corbusier model.

It is important to note that the firm’s three founders actually designed few of SOM’s hallmark buildings. They developed and led an architectural firm modeled on a corporate organization. Branch offices were opened in a number of cities with design principals in charge of each office. Instead of the more typical hierarchical arrangement of power, authority within SOM was arranged in a linear fashion, as each office head theoretically had equal voice in how the firm was run. A stipulation in the founding partners’ agreement required retirement at age 65 for each principal, thus prompting a constant renewal of the firm’s direction and focus.

With such an arrangement, it is not surprising that SOM’s designs exhibit a good deal of diversity and quality, particularly during the 1970s and beyond. The firm grew to an immense size in terms of both employees and offices. In addition to the original Chicago and New York offices, a San Francisco office was opened in 1946 when the firm took on the design of Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines and the Monterey Naval Post- graduate School. In 1967, the Washington, D.C., office was established to handle the firm’s work on the master plan of the Washington Mall. Other new offices were established in Los Angeles and Miami. Not all the new offices survived, however, as the firm constantly reacted to changing economic and building trends. Those offices founded in Denver, Portland, and Boston were eventually closed in 1987, Houston’s closed in 1988, and new offices were opened in the late 1980s in London and Hong Kong, as construction boomed in those areas.

Netsch once bitingly complained that SOM in the 1980s was producing “Reagan architecture for Reagan times.” The rejuvenation of design that the founding partners had intended thus did not always come to pass. In fact, once SOM had reached its pinnacle in the early 1970s with the visually satisfying John Hancock Center and the record-breaking height of the Sears Tower, the firm had the luxury of essentially sitting back and waiting for clients to come forward. Still, several fine structures were designed by SOM in the 1980s, including Bunshaft’s post-modern National Commercial Bank (1984) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the United Gulf Bank (1987) in Manama, Bahrain.

Because of its huge size and ability to provide numerous services ranging from interiors to transportation planning, corporate SOM could easily service clients’ needs and provide one-stop shopping. The size of the firm particularly suited the requirements of developers in the 1980s, as the focus moved from single high-rise structures to large- scale complex city developments, such as Rowes Wharf (1987) in Boston, World Wide Plaza (1989) in New York, and Canary Wharf (1991) in London. This trend continued into the 1990s, except that the location for building more often than not was in the Pacific Rim. Among SOM’s more recent projects are the 88-story Jin Mao Tower (1998) in Shanghai and the Korea World Trade Center (1999) in Seoul. The firm also won a competition to design a master plan for Saigon South, a new community designed for one million inhabitants south of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

VALERIE S. GRASH

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

8 April 1897 Born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana;

1917 Graduated from Bradley Polytechnic Institute (now Bradley University), Peoria, Illinois;

1921–24 studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge;

1924 bachelor’s degree in architecture;

1924–26 Worked for Maginnius and Walsh, Chicago;

1927 visiting scholar, American Academy, Rome;

1929–35 chief of design and assistant to the general manager, Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago;

1957 President, New York Building Congress; chairman, advisory council of the School of Architecture, Princeton, New Jersey; consultant architect to the United Nations, New York; consultant architect, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; fellow, American Institute of Architects. Awarded Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects;

27 September 1962 Died in Winter Haven, Florida.

Nathaniel A.Owings

5 February 1903 Born in Indianapolis, Indiana;

1921–22 Studied at the University of Illinois, Urbana;

1927 attended Cornell University;

1948–51 Chairman, Chicago Planning Commission;

1964–67 vice-chairman, California Highway Scenic Roads Commission;

1964–73 chairman, Temporary Commission on the Design of Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.;

1966–70 member of United States Secretary of the Interior’s Advisory Board on the National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments, Washington, D.C.;

1967–70 chairman, Urban Design Concept Team for the United States Interstate Highway System;

1970–72 chairman of United States Secretary of the Interior’s Advisory Board on the National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments, Washington, D.C.;

1973–82 member, Permanent Commission on the Design of Pennsylvania Avenue;

1983 trustee, American Academy, Rome; fellow, American Institute of Architects. Awarded Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects;

13 June 1984 Died in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

John O.Merrill

10 August 1896 Born in St. Paul, Minnesota;

1914–16 Attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison;

1919–21 studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge;

1921 bachelor’s degree in architecture;

1939 Worked for Granger and Bollenbacher, Chicago; chief architect for the Midwest States, United States Housing Administration;

1947–49 Director, Chicago Building Code Revision Commission;

fellow, American Institute of Architects; president, Chicago chapter, American Institute of Architects;

13 June 1975 Died in Chicago.

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

1936 Established as Skidmore and Owings in Chicago;

1937 New York office opened;

1939 became Skidmore, Owings and Merrill;

branch offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Miami, London, and Hong Kong;

the firm continues today under the same name.

Selected Publications

Architecture of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, 1950–1962, 1962

Architecture of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, 1963–1973, 1974

Nathaniel Owings: The American Aesthetic, 1969

The Spaces Between: An Architect’s Journey, 1973

Further Reading

Bush-Brown provides a catalogue raisonné of SOM’s work. Important works on individual SOM designers are Graham and Krinsky, while Bruegmann treats an individual structure. Dean provides excellent insight into the organization of the firm.

Bruegmann, Robert, (editor), Modernism at Mid-Century: The Architecture of the United States Air Force Academy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Bush-Brown, Albert, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill: Architecture and Urbanism, 1973–1983, Stuttgart, Germany: Hatje, and New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983; London: Thames and Hudson, 1984

Dean, Andrea Oppenheimer, “Profile: SOM, a Legend in Transition,” Architecture 78, no. 2 (1989)

Graham, Bruce, Bruce Graham of SOM, New York: Rizzoli, 1989

Krinsky, Carol Herselle, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, New York: Architectural History Foundation, and London: MIT Press, 1988

MORE BOOKS

Bunshaft, Gordon (United States); Corbusier, Le (Jeanneret, Charles- Édouard) (France); Glass; Glass Skyscraper (1920–21); Guggenheim Museum, New York City; Haj Terminal, Jeddah Airport; International Style; International Style Exhibition, New York (1932); Lever House, New York City; Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig (Germany); Sears Tower, Chicago; U.S. Air Force Chapel, Colorado Springs