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[Magazine page]

COVER STORY
SOM AT FIFTY

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's dynamic
interiors group contemplates past
and future on the half-century
anniversary of the firm.

[image alt text:]
Partners Meeting, Santa Fe, 1952
Back, left to right: Gordon Bun-
shaft, Jack Rodgers, Gross Samp-
sell, Walter Netsch, Francis Christy,
Jack King, William Brown, Fred
Kraft, Walter Severinghaus, Robert
Wagner, William Hartman
Front, left to right: Louis Skidmore,
Elliot Brown, Robert Cutler, Na-
thaniel A. Owings, James Ham-
mond, John Merrill

In the fifty years since its
founding in Chicago as an
architectural-engineering
firm, Skidmore, Owings &
Merril has become one of the
largest and most well-known
firms both in the United States
and abroad. With eight domes-
tic offices and one in London,
and a staff of over 1,500, its
annual volume of work over
the last five years have averaged
2 billion construction dollars.
SOM was an early and major
proponant of the International
Style and the firm's continued
success in a changing world has
resided not in the embracing of
the newest trend, but in a
steady faithfulness to a certain
ideal of quality and profession-
alism that has guided it
through four generations of
partners and its own gradual
evolution.
In an age when individual
architects enjoy the dubious
benefits of rock star status, SOM
has adhered to its founding
partners' original concept of a
collective approach to design.
"To gain the respect of the
clients," -and creative free-
dom-wrote Nathaniel A. Ow-
ings in 1973 in his memoirs
entitled The Spaces In Be-
tween, "SOM had to be power-
ful, had to have national cover-
age. To accomplish this cover-
age, we used a very old ethic:
the master builder system
based on the anonymous
Gothic builders of the Middle
Ages."
The firm, recipient of the
AIA'S first architectural firm
award for excellence in 1962,
has had its share of exceptional
architects, and for some, nota-
bly Gordon Bunshaft, anony-
mity proved elusive. Never-
theless, says Raul de Armas,
Design Partner, Interiors' 1984
Designer of the Year, "the ge-
nius of the firm lies not in hav-
ing geniuses, but in having
people who work together."
With in-house capabilities in
most of its offices for engineer-
ing, urban, environmental and
interior design facilities pro-
gramming and graphics, to
mention a few, and with an
extensive computer system for
both design and specification
work that can be customized
in-house for specific projects,
SOM remains committed to re-
search into new construction
and design methods, new ma-
terials and other efforts to ad-
vance the field of architecture.
The firm established the
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Foundation in 1979, which
awards study grants to promis-
ing candidates in architecture
and urban planning. Next year,
the Foundation will move to
the SOM-restored Charnley
House in Chicago, an 1890
mansion designed, fittingly
enough by Louis Sullivan and
Frank Lloyd Wright.
This November, SOM held
50th anniversary celebrations
in Chicago attended by the en-

Reprinted from INTERIORS December 1986 Copyright 1986 Billboard Publications, Inc.