SOM.COM
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Close-up of the U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, composed of 100 tetrahedrons
Inside the Blackbox: SOM's Technological Trajectory
Introduction
For an architecture firm to remain competitive, perhaps nothing is more critical than the pursuit of emerging technology. In its best buildings, SOM has used technological advances to establish new systems of architecture, from supertall engineering to large-scale sustainable urban plans.
Today the pursuit of technology applies, in particular, to computational systems. In May 2007, SOM made a significant commitment to exploring the nascent field of computational design when it established the BlackBox studio in the Chicago office. Under the direction of design partner Ross Wimer, four graduates of the Product Architecture and Engineering Program at the Stevens Institute of Technology joined the SOM team with the purpose of developing and leveraging parametric and algorithmic processes to generate new approaches to architectural, interior, and urban design within the firm’s own “black box”.
BlackBox’s incubation within SOM marks a significant (re)turn to technical mediation in the service of rational form-making, recalling investigations of earlier SOM studios. Several of the firm’s most well-known architects and engineers—including Walter Netsch, Fazlur Khan, and Bruce Graham—foreshadowed similar methods of algorithmic design as early as the 1960s.
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