Diplomatic Position: In the midst of the visual hubbub of China's third-largest city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill creates an understated ensemble of buildings for the U.S. Consulate General. The U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou, China, makes only the quietest of claims within the city's noisy new business district. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), its seven low-rise buildings—offices, screening facilities, a warehouse, and a residence for Marines—dot a 7.4-acre site in the burgeoning Pearl River New Town. Zaha Hadid's opera house lies catercorner to it, and Wilkinson Eyre's supertall IFC Guangzhou and KPF's soon-to-be-supertaller CTF Guangzhou are close by.

To attract the best and brightest faculty and students, universities today are asking architects for buildings that not only serve their academic goals but also bring prestige to their campuses through innovative design.

It is in the nature of tall buildings that rankings are short-lived, but at least for the moment, the 1,354-foot-tall, 77-story Al Hamra Firdous Tower, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), is the tallest building in Kuwait City.

While India's Park Hotel group has forged a reputation over its 44-year history for boutique luxury establishments, its brazenly sculptural, 270-room hotel in Hyderabad is the first it has built from scratch.

There is no denying that One World Trade Center (WTC), the 104-story tower now rising at the northern end of the Ground Zero site, is a tremendously ambitious commercial real estate venture.

Iconic skyscrapers, especially those that strive for the fleeting title of “world’s tallest building,” are rarely the progeny of cold logic.

From a distance, the half-mile-high Burj Khalifa in Dubai tapers to a near imperceptible spire like a mirage along the windswept desert coast of the Persian Gulf. 

Given the complex forces connecting China and the United States, the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s San Francisco office, had to negotiate difficult political, cultural, and architectural terrain.