SOM Helps to Clean Up the Hong Kong Coastline

On Saturday, November 19th, members of SOM’s Hong Kong office and City Design Practice traveled to a beach on Lantau Island to participate in the Hong Kong Coastal Cleanup Challenge. The annual volunteer event engages communities, schools, and businesses, raising awareness about plastic debris and empowering citizens to become direct agents of change for waste management … Continued

Mexican Sustainable Building Institute Honors BBVA Bancomer Operations Center

BBVA Bancomer Operations Center has been selected to receive a 2016 Premio Nacional from the Instituto Mexicano del Edificio Inteligente y Sustentable (Mexican Institute of Intelligent and Sustainable Building). Established in 1994, the award honors buildings that demonstrate the highest standards of environmentally sensitive design. BBVA Bancomer Operations Center is recognized in the Corporate Office … Continued

Construction Begins on U.S. Naval Academy’s New Cyber Studies Building

A new six-story, 206,400-sf building is currently under construction on the U.S. Naval Academy’s campus that will house cyber studies, the computer science department, and other related disciplines… Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is serving as the design lead on Turner Construction’s design-build team. “Our design for Hopper Hall will serve the Naval Academy’s … Continued

More Steps Forward for Philadelphia’s New 30th Street District

Without even putting a single shovel in the ground, the far-reaching plan that we and our public partners just launched to transform Philadelphia’s major transportation hub may well be changing the way business and state and local leaders look at the future of the city’s downtown… The vision that we announced in the spring for … Continued

SOM Reveals Vision for New Penn Station

New York, NY: This morning, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM), the renowned architecture, engineering, interiors and urban-planning firm, revealed its plan for a re-conceptualized Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. This vision plan is the result of a design challenge, issued by the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS), to re-imagine Penn Station – … Continued

3 Major Projects That Will Change the Fabric of New York City

At the 2016 Fast Company Innovation Festival, we got a glimpse behind three major projects that may, over the next decade, transform the face of the city… Built over an operational rail yard, Hudson Yards is its own neighborhood, both in size and by design: 28 acres of skyscrapers, mixed-used buildings, and public space… Finally, … Continued

John Kuchen and Olivier Brouard Join Facades+ Conference in San Francisco

John Kuchen, SOM Associate Director and Technical Designer, is chair of the upcoming Facades+AM conference, to be held at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco on Wednesday, December 7th. Olivier Brouard, Associate and Sustainable Engineering Specialist, will also present at the conference during a session on high performance design. The Facades+ conference series aims to create a dialogue about building … Continued

$520-Million Revamp of Long Beach Civic Center Takes Off

Last month, a pair of tower cranes took their place in the Long Beach skyline, as a display of continued work on the $520-million revamp of the Long Beach Civic Center. The first phase of the project will create a pair of mid-rise buildings, designed by SOM, which will serve as the new Long Beach … Continued

SOM Breaks Ground on World’s First Cyber Security Education Center

The forward-thinking folks at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland are equipping students for a world where hackers can paralyze Facebook and Twitter…, burrow into government email servers, or launch a cupcake counterinsurgency. Enter SOM: “Our design for Hopper Hall will serve the Naval Academy’s mission to equip a new generation of leaders with … Continued

VR Is Totally Changing How Architects Dream Up Buildings

This year, the commercial release of powerful, PC-driven headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive pushed consumer virtual reality to an inflection point. And the world of architecture has noticed. … Practically nobody can understand architectural drawings, and even 3D visualizations are a stretch for most. But everybody gets VR instinctively. “You can get to … Continued