As one of the largest and most prestigious architectural firms in the world, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has for half a century set the standard of American corporate design practice. In the decades after World War II, SOM's name was synonymous with some of the most illustrious examples of International Style architecture. In more recent years, as modernist orthodoxy has been revised, the firm has continued to occupy the forefront of a field that has become both more aesthetically diverse and more geographically fluid, presiding over a transition from International Style to global practice.A building by SOM today is above all a product of a precise "fit" between client, architect, and context. The decision as to whether it is made of granite and marble or glass and steel is an outcome of this relationship, not a matter of ideology. Diversity derives from conscious empiricism rather than willful eclecticism. In this sense, while SOM's variegated recent work departs from post-World War II orthodoxy, it redefines modern architecture's tradition of "problem solving." What continues to distinguish a SOM building is its masterly ability to translate contemporary conditions of practice into an exacting and sophisticated art of building. Read Less