A cross-section of the projects realized by the world's leading architectural firm, presented by the American scholar Nicholas Adams.
The most symbolic and representative projects realized the world over by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), from 1948 to the Nineties. The volume begins with an essay by the American architectural historian and critic Nicholas Adams who outlines SOM’s history from the firm’s foundation to the present, then reviews thirty key buildings chosen from the vast amount of projects of every shape and size built by the firm in all parts of the globe. In the beginning SOM was inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s designs and Le Corbusier’s early works, but as early as the Fifties the firm, in its turn, notably influenced architecture in American cities. Among the projects featured in the volume are: Lever House, New York (1950-1952); the Manufacturers Trust Company building, New York (1951-1954); the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Bloomfield (1954-1957); Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York (1955-1961); the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (1958-1962): the John Hancock Center, Chicago (1965-1970); the Weyerhaeuser Headquarters, Tacoma (1968-1971); the Haj Terminal, King Abdul Aziz International Airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (1975-1981).