Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Established 1936.
Louis Skidmore, b. Lawrenceburg, 1897; d. Winter Haven, Florida, 1962.
Nathaniel A. Owings, b. Indianapolis, 1903; d. Santa Fe, 1984.
John 0. Merrill, b. St Paul, 1896; d. Colorado Springs, 1975.
Succeeded by Gordon Bunshaft, b. Buffalo, NY, 1909; d. New York, 1990.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) - Large multi-disciplinary American, now international, architectural firm which evolved a highly successful team approach to architectural design. Architect Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings established an office in Chicago in 1936 and opened a branch in New York in 1937. In 1939 the practice became formally known as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) when Architect John Merrill joined it. From the outset, the office was organized on principles adapted from the American business world, which stressed the importance of teamwork and individual responsibility, together with an economical and efficient modus operandi. The firm’s early years were largely devoted to establishing a multi-disciplinary corporate structure which could satisfy the demands of high-powered commercial clients. The architectural breakthrough occurred in 1952, with the completion of Lever House in New York, by Bunshaft, a slick curtain-walled office slab block in the International Style, which demonstrated SOM’s attention to detail and initiated a series of similar developments. The huge scale of buildings undertaken by SOM often demands some form of structural innovation. This is exemplified by buildings such as the John Hancock Center in Chicago, whose structure is conceived as a rigid, rectangular, self-supporting tube, and the Sears Tower, also in Chicago, which consists of a cluster of framed steel tubes of varying heights. The Hancock Center was also the first large-scale multi-purpose complex to incorporate shops, offices and flats within a single building. SOM have also designed a number of buildings outside the USA, including the Haj Terminal at Jeddah International Airport, the largest tent roof construction in the world, and the National Commercial Bank, Jeddah (1983). More recently, the British office has been involved in overseeing the massive office development at Canary Wharf in London’s docklands.

Major buildings / works:
Lever House, New York, 1952.
John Hancock Center, Chicago, 1970.
Sears Tower, Chicago, 1974.
Haj Terminal, King Abdul Aziz International Airport, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1982. National Commercial Bank, Jeddah, 1983.

Bibliography:
Ernst Danz, The Architecture of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill: 1990-1962, New York, 1962.
Arthur Drexler and Axel Menges, The Architecture of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill: 1963-1973, New York, 1974.
C. H. Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Cambridge, Mass.,
1988.