Home of the big commission for well over half of a century, SOM was once synonymous with big New York and Chicago Modernism. The same firm that designed the Lever House and Chicago's John Hancock Tower hasn't given up (although it may have seemed that way for a while), emerging with strong designs for New York's new Penn Station and enough really tall buildings in Asia to keep a firm that still maintains eight offices on four continents busy for a while.

Lever House
(1952) New York City, United States

Gordon Bunschaft's much loved International Style icon (which sits diagonally across Park Avenue from Mies' Seagram Tower) proves that 1950s glass towers weren't hated by the public, only badly designed 1950s glass towers were.

Beinecke Rare Book Library
(1963) New Haven, Connecticut, United States

On the same Yale Campus as Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph and Eero Saarinen, Gordon Bunschaft's Beinecke Rare Book Library holds its own against all those big name architects. The building (complete with some seemingly prerequisite Isamu Noguchi sculptures) consisits of opague white marble panels, thin enough to appear eerily translucent from the inside.

Click here to learn everything you need to about how to visit the library, it's a lot more interesting if you can see the inside

United States Air Force Academy Chapel
(1962) Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States

Walter Netsch was the lead designer for the US Air Force Academy Chapel, a soaring, geometric fortress of solitude in the US Rocky Mountains. More than just a chapel, it a symbol of flight that has become over time a symbol of the US Air Force itself.

Click here to go to the USAFA site, a good place to visit if you're going anywhere near Colorado

John Hancock Tower
(1970) Chicago, Illinois, United States

Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Kahn designed two tall dark glass office towers in Chicago. One (finished in 1970) was loved while the other one (the Sears Tower, finished in ) was met with either indifference or downright hatred. The John Hancock Tower is everything that the Sears Tower isn't, a graceful, well sited mixed use tower (including offices, parking and apartments) in a much friendlier part of town

Click here to plan a visit to the Hancock Tower, the world's most famous building (according to the self promoting recording heard in the observation deck elevators)

Time Warner Center
(2004) New York City, United States

After wallowing for a decade or two in a post modern funk, the Time Warner Center (designed by David Childs) seems to embrace SOM's glass curtain wall glory days. The two shiny (fraternal) twin towers are extruded parallelograms, lucky victims of the regular Manhattan grid and an intersecting, diagonal Broadway.

Slideshow | United States Air Force Academy Chapel

See more of the USAFA Chapel (and fifteen more places) at the ArBITAT Places page... (go to places.ArBITAT.com)

ArBITAT WTC Archive

Follow the design, drama and construction of David Childs' Freedom Tower/WTC One, along with Slideshows, Commentaries and Images of the past, present and future of the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan at the ArBITAT WTC Archive... (go to archive at the ArBITAT Views Page)

ArBITAT FutureWatch

The sun never sets on the SOM offices, and all of them are busy churning out projects worldwide. Follow some of them (including the Trump Tower in Chicago and the new Penn Station concourse) at ArBITAT FutureWatch... (go to ArBITAT FutureWatch)

Construction Report

Watch the progress of SOM's World Trade Center Seven right where it used to be with the ArBITAT Construction Report... (go to ArBITAT Construction Reports)