Im Oktober 2006 wurden die Festen der Architekturwelt bis ins Mark erschüttert, als Adrian Smith, Partner im Büro von Skidmore, Owing & Merrill (SOM), nach fast 40 Jahren seinen Rücktritt ankündigte, um sein eigenes Büro zu eröffnen. Und das mit keinem Geringeren als seinem Kollegen Gordon Gill. Nicht nur das Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, der Jin Mao Tower in Schanghai und das Burj Dubai in den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten tragen Smith’ Handschrift. Bei SOM Chicago bekleidete er jede erdenkliche Position – vom Praktikanten bis zum Geschäftsführer. Als SOM-Partner war er in den letzten drei Jahren für den Bereich Design verantwortlich. Sein Name steht für Gebäude in XXL-Dimensionen, die sowohl die Herausforderungen schwindelerregender Höhe als auch multifunktionaler Nutzung spielend zu meistern scheinen, aber auch für zukunftsweisende ökologische Entwürfe wie z. B. den 69-stöckigen Pearl River Tower, ein Gebäude, das dank grüner Technologie – Windenergie und starke Turbinen – mit Null-Energieaufwand betrieben wird.
In October 2006 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) partner Adrian Smith announced that he was leaving the company after almost 40 years to start his own practice with fellow ex-SOM designer Gordon Gill. At SOM’s Chicago office he held almost every conceivable position, from student intern to CEO. He is known for large-scale, mixed-use, and supertall projects, as well as the sustainable design seen in the planned 69-story Pearl River Tower – a „zero energy“ building that uses wind harvesting, powerful turbines, and other green technologies.
When you announced that you were leaving SOM to start your own firm, you described it as a friendly separation. Did it work out after so many years?
(Laughs.) I think it’s still friendly. SOM has a mandatory retirement for partners at sixtyfive, but the current thinking is more about getting the younger generation in to run the firm. I was a beneficiary of that. I became a partner at thirty-five in 1980. But I thought, Why not take these next three years and start a new firm? My agreement was for three years, and I was up for renewal and was offered to stay, but on a one-year term. I talked with my wife about what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. Do I want to retire at sixty-five or do I want to stay connected with the community in Chicago and continue to practice for the rest of my life? The other part of that story was that there were some very good people at SOM in Chicago who were up for and should have made partner.
You left SOM with about ten projects still in progress, including Burj Dubai, the Pearl River Tower, and the Chicago Trump Tower.Would you like to keep working as a consultant?
I offered to be available to consult on these projects if SOM and the client want me to. I didn’t want the clients to feel like I was abandoning them. And I wanted to stay involved in Burj Dubai. They wanted to tie me to a „noncompete“ contract on all of these projects in order to move forward. I didn’t want that because I thought we should take each project by itself. There
might be one or two clients who would rather go ahead with me than SOM. In most cases the clients have come to SOM because of me – especially the newer projects that aren’t through a lot of the design work yet. With 20 employees we’ve moved to the top floor of a 1959 SOM building in Chicago. The space has travertine paving and stainlesssteel columns – like the Barcelona Pavilion. We’ll have room for about sixty-five people, and projects in Dubai and Chigago and soon in London and China.
What’s the idea for the firm that you’ve started with Gordon Gill, do you have more opportunity to pursue sustainability with Gordon than with SOM?
Most of my experience throughout my partnership has been large-scale, mixed-use, and supertall buildings. In addition, I’ve always been interested in the issue of sustainability. It manifested in my earlier years more as a contextual approach, first taking into consideration the climate and the ecology. Then it took on a cultural meaning as well. In the last decade it took on more of a technology bent, as with the development of the Pearl River Tower, in Guangzhou, where we were successful in convincing the client to attempt to do a highly sustainable zero-energy building. Gordon and I know how to do large-scale projects that are ecologically sensitive and environmentally responsible and make some economic sense for the client. Gordon and I want to do research that we can apply to buildings, and we want to collaborate with the local Chicago universities, but we also want to work with organizations like Boeing,NASA, and others that can help advance the technology of energy-producing mechanisms. For example, there are a couple of usable windturbine devices for buildings, but they really aren’t optimum. Who else better than the airplane industry to help us develop a turbine?There was some research going on at SOM, but mostly it was glass and more artistic endeavors rather than meat and potatoes. I’d like to research maintaining buildings. There should be a much easier way to wash windows, like using robotic window washing. If you really put your mind to that issue, a lot of other things can be integrated into the architecture that could be very beneficial and cost-effective.
© JAM Publications 2007
When you announced that you were leaving SOM to start your own firm, you described it as a friendly separation. Did it work out after so many years?
(Laughs.) I think it’s still friendly. SOM has a mandatory retirement for partners at sixtyfive, but the current thinking is more about getting the younger generation in to run the firm. I was a beneficiary of that. I became a partner at thirty-five in 1980. But I thought, Why not take these next three years and start a new firm? My agreement was for three years, and I was up for renewal and was offered to stay, but on a one-year term. I talked with my wife about what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. Do I want to retire at sixty-five or do I want to stay connected with the community in Chicago and continue to practice for the rest of my life? The other part of that story was that there were some very good people at SOM in Chicago who were up for and should have made partner.
You left SOM with about ten projects still in progress, including Burj Dubai, the Pearl River Tower, and the Chicago Trump Tower.Would you like to keep working as a consultant?
I offered to be available to consult on these projects if SOM and the client want me to. I didn’t want the clients to feel like I was abandoning them. And I wanted to stay involved in Burj Dubai. They wanted to tie me to a „noncompete“ contract on all of these projects in order to move forward. I didn’t want that because I thought we should take each project by itself. There
might be one or two clients who would rather go ahead with me than SOM. In most cases the clients have come to SOM because of me – especially the newer projects that aren’t through a lot of the design work yet. With 20 employees we’ve moved to the top floor of a 1959 SOM building in Chicago. The space has travertine paving and stainlesssteel columns – like the Barcelona Pavilion. We’ll have room for about sixty-five people, and projects in Dubai and Chigago and soon in London and China.
What’s the idea for the firm that you’ve started with Gordon Gill, do you have more opportunity to pursue sustainability with Gordon than with SOM?
Most of my experience throughout my partnership has been large-scale, mixed-use, and supertall buildings. In addition, I’ve always been interested in the issue of sustainability. It manifested in my earlier years more as a contextual approach, first taking into consideration the climate and the ecology. Then it took on a cultural meaning as well. In the last decade it took on more of a technology bent, as with the development of the Pearl River Tower, in Guangzhou, where we were successful in convincing the client to attempt to do a highly sustainable zero-energy building. Gordon and I know how to do large-scale projects that are ecologically sensitive and environmentally responsible and make some economic sense for the client. Gordon and I want to do research that we can apply to buildings, and we want to collaborate with the local Chicago universities, but we also want to work with organizations like Boeing,NASA, and others that can help advance the technology of energy-producing mechanisms. For example, there are a couple of usable windturbine devices for buildings, but they really aren’t optimum. Who else better than the airplane industry to help us develop a turbine?There was some research going on at SOM, but mostly it was glass and more artistic endeavors rather than meat and potatoes. I’d like to research maintaining buildings. There should be a much easier way to wash windows, like using robotic window washing. If you really put your mind to that issue, a lot of other things can be integrated into the architecture that could be very beneficial and cost-effective.
© JAM Publications 2007
