The global challenges we face today — climate change, population growth, and the degradation of the natural environment — threaten not only our way of life, but the survival of our planet. To address these interconnected issues, we should start by looking at cities. Today, the urban built environment accounts for about 70 percent of all greenhouse … Continued
By all appearances, American cities are becoming greener than ever before. Sustainable design has gone mainstream, LEED-certified buildings are commonplace, and redeveloped downtown districts — complete with new bike lanes, buses, and light rail — make a low-carbon lifestyle ever-more attractive. But is all of this really enough to fight climate change? In the architecture … Continued
Engineering Artistry From the monumental Picasso sculpture in Chicago’s Daley Plaza, to Isamu Noguchi’s Red Cube in Lower Manhattan, SOM’s history of integrating iconic artworks into a wide variety of building sites is well documented. Perhaps less known, however, is the role that engineers have played in helping to realize various works of art. In … Continued
The skyline of Tianjin, China, has a new icon: the Tianjin CTF Finance Centre. The skyscraper’s final steel beam has been lifted into place — and when it opens later this year, it will become the world’s eighth-tallest building, at 530 meters. It’s a milestone for this port city and its growing urban region, now … Continued
Can a single building change Londoners’ perceptions of what it means to live in a high-rise? That’s precisely what Harry Handelsman — the developer credited with transforming once-overlooked neighborhoods into epicenters of cool, with such projects as St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel and Chiltern Firehouse — has set out to do with Manhattan Loft Gardens in … Continued
With its soaring, light-filled spaces, San Francisco’s International Terminal goes beyond the functional requirements of air travel to become something more: an iconic, uplifting gateway to the city. The terminal’s hangar-like structure and massive, double-cantilevered roof evoke the Bay Area landscape and the history of aviation itself. In this excerpt from a new book about the … Continued
When I was a kid, my family wouldn’t think to embark on a road trip without a TripTik in the glove box. These small, spiral-bound notebooks (a relic of pre-digital times) were convenient travel guides, personalized by AAA for its members on a trip-by-trip basis. Before GPS or Google Maps, TripTiks included paper map sets … Continued
The urgent need for shelter is often accompanied by a lack of resources. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, more than half of the urban population lives in substandard housing — a problem compounded by the fact that many families do not have access to conventional financing and building materials. In places where resources are scarce, could … Continued
63 Madison is an aging 1960s Midtown office tower, typical of the buildings that will need retrofitting under New York City’s new climate legislation. In early 2020, an ideas competition was held to explore ways to improve the building’s environmental performance and functionality. SOM developed a proposal with applicability for many such buildings: a bold, … Continued
If you’ve driven from Los Angeles to San Francisco along Interstate 5 — that perfectly straight highway surrounded by open fields and farmland — then you have a sense for the vast horizons of California’s agrarian heartland, the San Joaquin Valley. As part of the expansive Central Valley, which stretches some 450 miles through the … Continued