Submission by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
Being a good ancestor
Practice
1. Do you have a clearly stated purpose aligned with the planetary emergency? We’re looking for a bold ambition here, and a culture which recognises the need for long-term thinking.
We were among the first design and engineering firms to join the World Green Building Council’s Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment. In 2022, we became a carbon neutral business through operational emissions reductions and high-quality carbon offsets. We are also signatories to the UN’s Race to Zero campaign and a Science Based Targets initiative-validated organisation, aligning our decarbonisation pathway with climate science.
Our broader commitments include the AIA 2030 Commitment, AIA Materials Pledge, China Accord, and SE2050 Commitment, each driving measurable sustainability outcomes across our projects and operations. Our team has also helped shape global climate leadership initiatives, including the world’s first Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, MEP2040, the ASHRAE Decarbonization Task Force, WBCSD Decarbonizing Construction Guide and the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge.
By 2030, we’re aiming for net zero operational carbon across 100% of active projects, advancing to net zero whole life carbon across all active work by 2040.
2. Do you have a clearly stated purpose aligned with the planetary emergency? We’re looking for a bold ambition here, and a culture which recognises the need for long-term thinking.
Our firm was founded 90 years ago on a radical model—an “experiment”—of interdisciplinary practice. With a mandatory retirement age for partners at age 65 that ensures younger generations cycle into leadership roles, generations have upheld the idea that bringing architecture, engineering, and planning together could enable solutions to impossible problems. This ethos has been at the core of our work for decades: a steadfast belief in collaboration as a driver of design culture, a pioneering spirit of technical innovation, and optimism in environmental advocacy.
That culture and pioneering spirit can be seen throughout our history, from the first modernist office building in New York City to innovative tall buildings that have redefined city skylines. Today, our designers are pushing toward urgently needed solutions for the fight against climate change, embedding sustainable design principles into all our work—from the smallest interior space to the largest master plan.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
Since 2021, we’ve presented at every UN Conference of the Parties. At COP30, our Sustainability Director presented insights into advancing a zero-carbon and human-centric approach to design.
In 2025, we led a panel at the ASHRAE Building Decarbonization Conference on pushing buildings beyond net zero. During Climate Week NYC, we hosted “Reimagining Carbon Sink Cities”—an event exploring how to transform the urban environment to capture carbon—and contributed to a publication with the City CDR Initiative envisioning the pathways to creating carbon sink cities.
Our additional publications include an op-ed for “The Architects’ Journal” advocating for stronger climate policy, the upcoming Sustainability Design Guide from the American Institute of Steel Construction and the Seventh Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In our recently released Impact Report, we shared our Equity Toolkit: a guide for designers to develop projects promoting security, resilience, and affordability.
Project
1. Do you advocate for long-term thinking at the outset of work? Do you initiate work with long-term thinking and challenge clients? Also, can the organisation demonstrate that this approach has worked?
Yes. We advocate for long-term thinking from the earliest stages of every project by challenging clients to consider whole life carbon, resilience, adaptability, and future regulatory risks alongside cost and performance. Our Whole Life Carbon Consulting service was developed specifically to shift these conversations to the forefront, enabling clients to measure and reduce embodied and operational carbon from concept design through a building’s full lifecycle.
This approach recognises that nearly 80% of a building’s lifetime emissions are locked in during construction and material selection, making early decisions critical and often irreversible. We, therefore, use data-driven carbon analysis to guide choices on structure, materials, systems, reuse, and operational strategies before key design decisions are fixed.
This methodology has already influenced major projects globally, helping clients align with emerging frameworks such as the EU Taxonomy and New York’s Local Law 97, while reducing long-term carbon exposure, operational costs, and transition risk
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
Yes. We integrate future climate conditions and resilience planning into projects at building, infrastructure, and urban scales. We design for long-term adaptation to risks including extreme heat, flooding, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, and seismic events.
One example of this is at a university in California, where we expanded an engineering center in a seismic zone using shape memory alloys—a pioneering structural system that enables the building to regain its original form after deformation, improving post-earthquake resilience.
In Chicago, a floating eco-park restores habitat along an industrialised river channel while improving stormwater management, biodiversity, ecological health, and climate adaptability through nature-based design solutions.
For a peninsula in Ho Chi Minh City, we leveraged nature-based solutions to address flooding by allowing the Saigon River to enter specific parklands and buffer zones when flooding occurs—enabling a new community to exist in a changed climate.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
Since 2021, we’ve been working to find a way to radically transform the built environment to go beyond net zero: to remove carbon from the atmosphere. At COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, we unveiled a concept for buildings to capture carbon and purify the air. Since then, we’ve developed a design for a high-rise building that can be built today, and reach a 100 percent reduction in whole life carbon in the first five years of the tower’s life.
As a first step to creating a carbon-absorbing building, we partnered with a materials startup to produce a carbon-absorbing, algae-based cement, which replaces 40 percent of traditional cement. This supplemental blend is available on the market, and has already been used as a roadway for one of our projects—an international center in NYC to develop solutions to the climate crisis with a leading university.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
Yes. We integrate biophilic design principles across its studios through natural materials, daylight access, planting, wellness-focused workspaces and shared gathering areas that support collaboration and human connection. Our offices are designed to strengthen occupants’ relationship with nature, while also improving wellbeing, comfort, and productivity.
Our New York and Chicago offices recently achieved WELL Platinum certification under the IWBI WELL v2 pilot, recognising leadership in healthy, high-performance workplace environments. These spaces incorporate strategies focused on air quality, light, materials, movement, mental health, and community.
Beyond the physical workplace, our firm regularly convenes staff, collaborators, and clients in outdoor and landscape-based settings through project site visits and public realm engagement activities. We view biophilia not as an aesthetic layer, but as part of a broader commitment to reconnecting people, cities, and design practice with natural systems and long-term environmental stewardship.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
Nature-based thinking informs our work across architecture, engineering, and urban design. Our projects increasingly integrate ecological performance, biodiversity, water sensitivity, and climate adaptation as core design drivers rather than secondary considerations.
In Chicago, an eco-park transforms a formerly industrial river corridor into a floating ecological park that restores habitat, improves water quality, supports biodiversity, and creates public access to nature.
Currently in construction in Oman, a new city responds to rising temperatures, humidity, and flooding by transforming a 7.5-kilometre dry riverbed into a green corridor with shaded public spaces and water-sensitive landscapes.
In New York, our firm is incorporating low-carbon and carbon-absorbing materials as part of a sustainability center alongside landscape strategies that support environmental restoration and public engagement with climate solutions.
Across our projects, we prioritise passive design, circular material strategies, urban greening, and water-conscious planning to create built environments that work with natural systems rather than against them.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
Yes. Our team supports ecological restoration and environmental stewardship through our operations, research partnerships, industry leadership, and project work at multiple scales. Beyond delivering climate-responsive projects, we contribute to initiatives that advance biodiversity, low-carbon materials, urban greening, and regenerative design practices across the building industry.
We collaborate with academic institutions, industry organisations, and material innovators to accelerate scalable climate and ecological solutions, including carbon-absorbing construction materials and nature-based urban strategies.
Within our operations, we have achieved carbon neutrality and aligned our climate targets with the Science-Based Targets Initiative and the UN Race to Zero campaign. We recognise that supporting nature requires both direct ecological interventions and systemic transformation of how buildings, infrastructure, materials, and cities are conceived, delivered, and maintained over time.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
Yes. Our work increasingly seeks to emulate the resilience, adaptability and resource efficiency of mature ecosystems by integrating regenerative systems into buildings, landscapes, and urban environments.
For an ivy league university in the US, we planned an entirely new expansion to the institution’s campus that aims to reach its goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2046. The planning emerged from a deep appreciation of the site’s pastoral landscape, with bioswales that will absorb stormwater and a network of 156 geo-exchange bores extending 600 feet underground. This zero-carbon system sits beneath the sports fields, making use of the land to eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for heating and cooling.
In Toronto, we are transforming a former airfield into a transit-oriented development centered around a verdant public realm. Eight acres of new parks, open spaces, and green corridors bring biodiversity, absorb stormwater, and mitigate the heat island effect.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
Yes. Our firm actively advances material stewardship through low-carbon design, circular economy strategies, material transparency, and innovation in regenerative construction materials. We prioritise reducing embodied carbon through adaptive reuse, efficient structural systems, responsible material selection, and lifecycle-based decision making across projects.
Concrete production alone accounts for approximately 8% of global carbon emissions. To address this, our team partnered with a materials start-up to develop a bio-based, carbon-absorbing concrete alternative that supports pathways toward carbon-negative construction. The algae-based material sequesters carbon dioxide through photosynthesis during algae growth and through carbonate mineralisation during curing, permanently storing carbon within the material itself.
This research forms part of a broader commitment to transforming high-impact materials and reducing dependence on resource-intensive supply chains. Through our Whole Life Carbon Consulting practice and industry leadership initiatives, we continue to advocate for material circularity, reuse, low-carbon procurement and measurable reductions in embodied environmental impacts.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
Yes. Our firm increasingly applies biologically inspired approaches across architecture and urban design by integrating biophilia, climate-responsive design, ecosystem restoration, and place-based environmental strategies into our work.
Our projects respond to local ecological and climatic conditions through passive design, landscape integration, water-sensitive planning, urban greening, and biodiversity enhancement.
In Ho Chi Minh City, we have leveraged nature-based solutions to address flooding by allowing the Saigon River to enter specific parklands and buffer zones when flooding occurs—enabling a new community to exist in a changed climate by protecting key infrastructure and residential neighborhoods.
For a new major headquarters in Shenzhen and a mixed-use development in Singapore, expansive skygardens are designed with natural materials and plantings encouraging biodiversity.
Across projects and operations, we view biologically inspired design as essential to creating resilient, regenerative environments that work in partnership with natural systems rather than in opposition to them.
Creating a just space for people
Practice
1. Do you have a progressive EDI policy and can you evidence many forms of diversity, which are welcomed and acknowledged, within your company/organisation?
In 2020, we released a comprehensive Diversity, Equity + Inclusion Action Plan, and our annual Impact Report, which we release on our website, highlights the progress we’ve made and the areas where we need to improve. It’s part of our commitment to maintain an open dialogue about equity at our firm, in our industry, and in the built environment. Our Impact Report includes demographic numbers in each of our offices and at all levels across the firm, and updates on initiatives led by our Employee Resource Groups and Equity Action Committee, which together work to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging across our internal practices, operations, and professional culture.
For three straight years, we’ve been recognized by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Equality 100 Award, earning a top score in its Corporate Equality Index. The Index evaluates workplace policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ inclusion, including nondiscrimination protections, benefits, and culture.
2. Do you operate a no overtime culture, meet the living wage consistently, and stipulate a fair salary ratio between staff of all levels?
We are committed to fostering a supportive and equitable working environment across our practice. While we do not formally operate a no-overtime policy, we aim to manage workloads responsibly and encourage a culture where overtime is minimised and monitored.
We meet London’s living wage, recognising this as a vital standard for promoting fair pay amongst our London based team.
3. Do you support charities, community groups, social enterprises, action groups and others through pro-bono work, charitable giving or in-kind donations?
Yes. Our team is committed to creating impact beyond our firm, extending into the communities where we live and work.
Over the past year, we have contributed pro-bono design expertise to communities impacted by wildfires, supported environmental restoration through a river clean-up initiative in Chicago, and volunteered time with local organisations addressing food insecurity.
In addition, as a member of Article 25’s More Than a Building initiative in the UK, which we support through in-kind contributions, we are helping advance a mission to promote equity and resilience in communities worldwide through high-quality design.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
Yes, but this approach is still evolving and is not yet implemented consistently across all projects, offices, or supply chain relationships. Our firm increasingly incorporates ethical, environmental and social considerations into decisions around project pursuits, collaborators, and material selection, particularly where climate impact, resilience, human wellbeing, and long-term environmental performance are concerned.
Our firmwide commitments—including the AIA Materials Pledge, SE2050 Commitment, Race to Zero campaign, and Science Based Targets initiative validation—help establish a shared framework for responsible decision making and accountability. Sustainability specialists, technical experts and interdisciplinary project teams are regularly engaged in evaluating environmental performance, carbon impacts, and material health considerations during project development.
We recognise that truly regenerative practice requires more systematic and transparent governance across procurement and partnerships. Strengthening these processes, including broader staff engagement and clearer ethical assessment criteria, is an active area of ongoing development within the practice.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
Our Equity Design Lab is a multidisciplinary group within our firm dedicated to advancing equitable, healthy, and resilient built environments where communities thrive. By developing an Equity Toolkit and offering hands-on guidance throughout the design process, the Equity Design Lab helps teams advance design solutions through three lenses: social equity, by celebrating and amplifying local cultural heritage; environmental equity, by placing health and wellness at the heart of design; and economic equity, by fostering locally sustained economic opportunities.
The toolkit provides a structured, step-by-step approach that helps project teams integrate equity into decision-making, evaluate how project teams engage with local communities, and align design outcomes with community needs and priorities. At every stage of the design process, the group evaluates how projects shape access, opportunity, and lived experience for the people they serve.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
We approach our work with the belief that every project presents an opportunity to equitably enrich the human experience. In Los Angeles, we’ve revamped transit infrastructure, with more than 250 of 3,000 bus shelters we designed now bringing much-needed shade, shelter, and smart infrastructure to the city’s streets. In Milan, we worked on creating a sustainable, intergenerational, and green community that housed athletes in the short term and is transitioning into student housing to address a chronic shortage of student beds. For a bustling intersection in Atlanta, we retrofitted an aging concrete structure that bifurcated the neighborhood to create an inviting destination improving daylighting, circulation, and safety. Over in San Francisco, our design for an expanded religious temple hosts various programs to welcome the broader community.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
Whilst we have developed tools like the Equity Design Toolkit through our Equity Design Lab and consistently seek to engage local stakeholders through all our projects, we recognise that meaningful equity is not a finished outcome and that we still have a long way to go in realising this in practice.
In cities around the world, we have worked to embed community priorities into design decisions, from transit infrastructure to adaptive reuse and civic space.
However, we also acknowledge that engagement can be uneven, that communities are not monolithic, and that representation in design and participatory process can always go further and deeper.