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High Quality. The first big break for the firm was the commission to build Oak Ridge, Tenn., the A-bomb town that was constructed in complete secrecy, eventually grew to a population of 75,000. In its wake came jobs to design a hotel, airbases in Morocco, and three towns in Okinawa. Having achieved a reputation for bigness, S.O.M. earned a name for high-quality design with Manhattan's Lever House. Lever has since been copied so often—and so badly—that it has lost much of its impact. But 16 years ago, it astonished and delighted the U.S. In its use of sheer glass curtain walls, its spacious plaza (75% of the site), and bold positioning of horizontal slab and vertical shaft, it was revolutionary. More than any other, it set the style of office buildings in the 1950s and '60s. Even today, despite rumors that the company will tear down and rebuild it, Lever Bros, insists it will keep the building, proudly uses its silhouette to identify its products.
When S.O.M. won out over nine other firms in its bid to design the $152.5 million Air Force Academy, it decided to use the same modular glass curtain walls. But not without a fight. When a high-ranking Air Force officer suggested that the architects might better use sandstone, Owings was ready with an answer. "General," he said, "would you build an airplane out of sandstone? Well, I don't think we will build the academy out of it either."
By the late 1950s, S.O.M. had established itself as the corporate architect.* As Owings recalls his first encounter with Henry Ford: "We were scared as hell. We didn't know what they wanted. So we just said, 'Look, we're going to live with you and love you and learn to know you.' " S.O.M. designers refer to the client-architect relationship as "a marriage," and as clients testify, there are few secrets from anyone by the end of the association. The product of this hard union is usually a beautiful building. S.O.M. has won more top design awards from the American Institute of Architects than any other architectural firm.
Invisible Partners. "I've produced the people who produce the buildings," says Owings with understandable pride. He is referring to his largely invisible partners, each busy in the five S.O.M. offices and each competing with the others. Among them are four designers who by general consensus rank at the very top of their profession.