For over four decades, the mission of the SOM Foundation has remained constant but its programs, initiatives, and leadership have evolved to address the specific issues of its time. From the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism to the current awards, these efforts are dedicated to investing in and supporting the next generation of designers.
Detail of the Charnley House, former headquarters of the CIAU. © Chicago History Museum | Hedrich Blessing Collection.
The architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) traces its origins back to 1936, when Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings formed a partnership in Chicago. A second office was opened in New York City the following year. In 1939 the partnership adopted its present name with the addition of a third member, architect and structural engineer John O. Merrill. The firm found success working on governmental, corporate, and civic projects and rapidly expanded in the following decades. By the early 1960s, SOM had established multiple offices across the United States and was becoming one of the largest and most profitable architectural firms in the world known for their elegant, modernist designs.
As SOM grew, so did its philanthropic efforts. The SOM Foundation was established in 1979 to consolidate donations, which had previously been given out at the discretion of individual offices, for a greater impact. The creation of the Foundation coincided with a shift in leadership at SOM. The 1970s had seen the departure of some of the most important figures in the early years of the firm, notably Nathaniel Owings, the last remaining founding partner, who retired in 1975, and Gordon Bunshaft, design partner in the New York office, who retired in 1979. The shift was influential in defining the role of the Foundation—it would be dedicated to investing in and supporting the next generation.
The most important figure in the creation of the SOM Foundation was Chicago partner Bruce Graham, who served as the Foundation's first chair. The founding board included, in addition to Graham, partners from SOM’s different offices: Edward (Chuck) Bassett, Gordon Wildermuth, Thomas Eyerman, Marc Goldstein, James DeStefano, and David Childs.
While the SOM Foundation spent its first two years developing a plan for its future philanthropic activities, it also provided financial support to a range of important initiatives in Chicago and across the United States.
The first grant was a gift of $5,000 to the University of Pennsylvania to help establish the school’s Louis Kahn Archives. The largest early gifts were grants to MIT, in honor of John O. Merrill; to Cornell (in collaboration with the National Archives), for the preservation of Nathaniel A. Owings’s papers on urban development; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Additional awards in the first two years were granted to the Orchestral Association and the Chicago Architecture Foundation in Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum Society, and The Western Addition in San Francisco; The Drawing Center and the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York; the Portland Art Foundation in Portland; and The Corcoran Gallery of Art and The National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC.
During this timeframe, the SOM Foundation also supported Joan Miró’s Chicago (also known as Miss Chicago and Moon, sun and one star), a 39-foot-tall sculpture located in Chicago’s Loop. The sculpture—the first that Spanish artist Joan Miró planned for a public space in a large city—was commissioned in the early 1960s by Bruce Graham as part of his design for the Brunswick Building (now the Cook County Administration Building). The commission was delayed until 1980, when Mayor Jane Byrne launched new efforts to realize Miró’s sculpture using public and private funding. Miró donated the design of the work as his present to the City of Chicago. The sculpture, dedicated on the artist’s 88th birthday on April 20, 1981, is located at the Brunswick Plaza between the Cook County Administration Building and the Chicago Temple Building (69 West Washington Street, Chicago, IL 60601).
The SOM Foundation was created in 1979 to promote architecture nationally by giving fellowships to students.
Bruce Graham, First SOM Foundation Chair
Bruce Graham. © SOM.
Perhaps the most important impact of the SOM Foundation Fellowship was the opportunity to experience firsthand the architecture that remained locked in my mind as ideals or icons, but only in printed form, or, at best, enlarged in a slide lecture. Dislocated from site, time, locale, texture, and culture, they held the imperious allure and aloofness that distinguishes the image of architecture from Architecture.
Marion Weiss
1982 Master of Architecture
One of the earliest goals of the SOM Foundation was to support and broaden the education of promising architecture students by providing the opportunity to travel. Plans to establish traveling fellowships began in 1980 and were modeled in part on the Rome Prize, which allowed US students to study at the American Academy in Rome, and the Rotch Travelling Scholarship, the oldest scholarship of its kind in the US. However, the most direct influence on their formulation was a committee, which included the heads of several prominent US architecture programs, convened by Bruce Graham to make recommendations. The committee summarized its proposal in a long letter that formed the basis for the SOM Foundation fellowships.
The first traveling fellowships were offered in 1981 and carried larger stipends than most others at the time. The awards in the first year, for example, offered stipends of $10,000, $7,000, and $5,000 for first-, second-, and third-place prizes, respectively. Another distinguishing feature of the fellowships was the jury, which included prominent architects and individuals from business, academia, and other institutions. During the early years of the fellowship program, the Foundation board opened the competition to a select group of universities. The list for the first competition in 1981 included Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Rice University, University of North Carolina, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, and Yale University.
As discussions about increasing the activities of the Foundation continued, the board decided in 1982 to expand membership to thirteen directors. The additional members would come from outside SOM, including representatives from leading architecture programs and cultural institutions. In 1983 the SOM partners welcomed Vartan Gregorian, head of the New York Public Library, and in 1984, Thomas Beeby, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and Henry Cobb, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University. In 1985 the board again expanded, with seven SOM members and up to eleven outside members. Among those added were Stanley Tigerman, Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Elmer Johnson, Vice President of General Motors; and Robert A. M. Stern, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Columbia University. The broadening scope of the board brought equal changes to the fellowship program. In 1985, at the strong urging of Thomas Beeby, the board decided to open the competition to all accredited schools of architecture—significantly increasing the reach of the SOM Foundation's initiatives.
In the meantime, a series of activities outside the SOM Foundation started to suggest new initiatives. The most conspicuous was a series of charrettes, organized by Bruce Graham and Stanley Tigerman, to come up with ideas for the proposed 1993 World’s Fair in Chicago. The charrettes brought together architecture students and some of the best-known design professionals in the country. The experience of collectively discussing public issues on an urban scale was exhilarating to many of those involved and spurred the idea of creating a center that could foster an ongoing conversation.
In 1986, the SOM Foundation purchased and restored the Charnley House (1891–1892) for its offices. The historic building, located on the north side of Chicago’s Gold Coast, was designed by Louis Sullivan with assistance from his junior draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright. The same year, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of SOM’s founding, the Foundation announced its intention to create an institute devoted to architectural research. The goals of the SOM Institute (later renamed the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism) were the study of architecture, urbanism, engineering, and planning, and the advancement of the arts through educational endowments, support of museums and public organizations, preservation of archives, exhibitions, publication of special books on art and architecture, and other similar endeavors. The search for a director had already started before the Institute’s existence was announced to the public. The list of finalists included Francesco Dal Co, Josef Kleihues, Leon Krier, Aldo Rossi, and Jorge Silvetti. Krier would ultimately be appointed to a three-year term in August 1986, however, he abruptly resigned in January 1987. Shortly after, Krier became the Prince of Wales's personal consultant for architecture and urbanism. A new search was started and John Whiteman, then at Harvard University, was appointed as the director. The opening of the Charnley House took place at the end of September 1987. By this time the board of the SOM Foundation had grown to sixteen members, among them a large number of prominent architects, including Emilio Ambasz, Edward (Chuck) Bassett, Thomas Beeby, David M. Childs, Henry Cobb, Lawrence S. Doane, H. Laurance Fuller, Frank O. Gehry, Bruce Graham, Michael Graves, Diane Legge, Michael A. McCarthy, Charles W. Moore, William Randolph Hearst III, Robert A. M. Stern, and Stanley Tigerman.
During Whiteman’s term the Institute brought in a number of established and emerging scholars to pursue projects. Fellows included Jennifer Bloomer, Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Mario Gandelsonas, Benjamin Gianni, John Hejduk, Catherine Ingraham, Jeffrey Kipnis, Ben Nicholson, Mark Rakatansky, Yehuda Safran, Saskia Sassen, Ricardo Scofidio, Richard Sennett, and Mark Wigley. Fares El Dahdah, Michael Freedberg, Nina Hofer, Michael Markham, Mark Robins, Hashim Sarkis, Harry Simms, Silvano Sole, William Urban, and Ann Wittlin were interns and/or research assistants. The Institute set forth an ambitious agenda: in addition to supporting invited scholars, it organized events related to the fellows’ research and produced its own series of publications, distributed by MIT Press.
Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism books published by the MIT Press between 1990 and 1992.
British architectural critic and editor Janet Abrams succeeded John Whiteman and was the second director of the Institute between 1991 and her resignation in 1992. During Abrams’s term, the CIAU developed its public programming and served a wider audience. The Charnley House Fireside Chats invited guest speakers to CIAU, including Eva Jiricna, Mike Davis, Jean-Louis Cohen, Wes Jones, John Hejduk, Andrea Kahn, and Keller Easterling. Between October 1991 and March 1992, Abrams organized three colloquia: “The Chicago World’s Fairs of 1893 and 1992” (1991), “The Information City in Formation” (1991), and “Looping the Loop: the Ups and Downs of Chicago’s Downtown” (1992). The 1992 Burnham Prize, which was jointly sponsored by the CIAU and the Chicago Architectural Club, awarded a $5,000 stipend plus a Fellow-in-Residence status at the CIAU to Chicago architect Joseph Barden. Two exhibitions were presented at the Charnley House during this period: Between Exits 0 and 1: The Polar City (1991) featured work by UIC graduate students from the studio run by Robert Somol and Doug Garofalo and Outside Practice: Work by John Hejduk (1992) represented the formal conclusion of John Hejduk’s CIAU Fellowship. Other initiatives included Brains for Breakfast, a reading group initiated by Janet Abrams in collaboration with Greg Lynn, and a pilot issue of VELOCITY: the Journal of Space, Time, and Architecture, a new journal by the CIAU addressing current urban issues in Chicago and worldwide that was ultimately not published due to budget cuts imposed by the Board in fall 1992.
The Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism was forced to close down in July 1994, after the economic recession of the early 1990s, because it was unable to raise the funds necessary to maintain the quality of its programs.
Throughout the years in which the Institute operated, first as part of the SOM Foundation and since 1990 as a legally separate entity, the Foundation itself continued awarding student fellowships every year. The Charnley House was sold in April 1995 and funds were used to expand the Foundation’s core awards program. The Charnley-Persky House (renamed in recognition of its second benefactor, Seymour H. Persky) became home to the Society of Architectural Historians.
In 1996, the Foundation announced a major expansion to include new awards in the fields of interior design, urban design and planning, mechanical and electrical engineering, and structural engineering. Over the years, the SOM Foundation has awarded multiple prizes, including:
Master of Architecture 1981–2005
Fazlur Rahman Khan International Fellowship 1983–1988
Bachelor of Architecture 1985–2005
Architectural Educator Fellowship 1986–1989
UK Award 1996–2020
Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (CIAU) 1997–2003
Interior Architecture 1997–2004
Urban Design 1997–2005
Mechanical / Electrical Building Systems 1998–2001
Building Systems Technology Research Grant 2004
Design 2005
Special Recognition for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design 2006
Traveling Fellowship for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design 2006–2018
SOM Prize for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design 2006–2018
The nature and the tools of urban design and architecture are changing, and we now have the tangible opportunity, maybe for the first time, to fundamentally understand people holistically in relation to their built environment. This Research Prize brings science and design closer together and speaks to an emerging interdisciplinary understanding of cities.
Luís M. A. Bettencourt
2018 Research Prize Juror
The Research Prize comes at a critical moment in the field when new forms of research and inquiry are more essential than ever to push forward ideas that challenge the status quo and offer alternative narratives and ideas that can have lasting impact.
Zoë Ryan
2021 Research Prize Juror
The SOM Foundation currently offers six awards:
Research Prize 2018–Present
In 2018, the SOM Foundation introduced the Research Prize—an evolution of the former SOM Prize and SOM Travel Fellowship programs—to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research that addresses the critical issues of our time. Each year, two $30,000 prizes are awarded to faculty-led interdisciplinary teams based in the United States to conduct original research that contributes to the SOM Foundation’s current topic.
European Research Prize 2021–Present
In 2021, the SOM Foundation introduced the European Research Prize as an expansion of the US-based Research Prize to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research that addresses the critical issues of our time. The European Research Prize builds on the legacy of the UK Award that was established in 1996. Each year, one €20,000 prize is awarded to a faculty-led interdisciplinary team based in Europe to conduct original research that contributes to the SOM Foundation’s current topic.
Structural Engineering Fellowship 1998–Present
In 1998, the SOM Foundation created the Structural Engineering Traveling Fellowship, since renamed Structural Engineering Fellowship, to support research that has the potential to influence the practice and teaching of how structures can positively impact our built environment. The $20,000 fellowship is awarded annually to a graduating student based in the United States who specializes in structural engineering to conduct independent travel and research that contributes to the SOM Foundation’s current topic.
China Fellowship 2006–Present
In 2006, the SOM Foundation established the China Prize, now the China Fellowship, to support emerging design leaders to broaden their education and contribute to their future professional and academic careers. The $5,000 China Fellowship is awarded annually to three students in the last two years of either an undergraduate or graduate program in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, or urban design in the People’s Republic of China to conduct independent travel outside China and research that contributes to the SOM Foundation’s current topic.
Robert L. Wesley Award 2020–Present
In 2020, the SOM Foundation created the Robert L. Wesley Award—named in honor of the first Black partner at SOM—to support BIPOC undergraduate students enrolled in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, urban design, or engineering programs in the United States. Each year, three students will receive a $10,000 award in addition to a yearlong mentorship program that connects the students with leading BIPOC practitioners and educators. The awards are unrestricted in their use to best support the needs of students.
Researcher-in-Residence 2024–Present
In 2024, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and the SOM Foundation initiated Researcher-in-Residence, a joint residency program based in Los Angeles, to provide space and time for rigorous work that addresses pressing issues related to the built environment. Each year, a $5,000 fellowship and four to eight-week summer residency are awarded to an architect, artist, and/or researcher to conduct original research that contributes to the current topic.
Since 1981, the SOM Foundation has awarded more than $3.3 million to support research and emerging professionals making a difference in the built environment.
This text has been edited and expanded by Iker Gil from an essay originally written by Robert Bruegmann for the 1997 book Traveling Fellows: Fifteen Years of Years of Student Awards by the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Foundation.
SOM Foundation Chairs
Bruce Graham 1979–1989
Thomas J. Eyerman 1989–1991
Adrian Smith 1991–1995
Craig W. Hartman 1995–2002
Brian Lee 2002–2005
Mustafa Abadan 2005–2018
Leo Chow 2018–Present
Scott Duncan 2018–Present
SOM Foundation Executive Directors
Susan Larson 2006–2009
Nancy Abshire 2010–2019
Iker Gil 2019–Present
SOM Foundation Administrative Directors
Sonia Cooke 1985–1992
Lisa Westerfield 1997–2005
Chicago Institute of Architecture and Urbanism Directors
Leon Krier 1986–1987
John Whiteman 1988–1991
Janet Abrams 1991–1992
