The SOM Foundation has announced the 2011 SOM Prize Winner and Runner-up. Brandon Clifford, a recent graduate of the Master of Architecture’s program at Princeton University, was selected as the winner of the prestigious SOM Prize, a $50,000 Research and Travel Fellowship. Clifford will visit multiple countries on four continents in carrying out his research topic, “Volume: Researching Past Methods of Stereotomy.”
SOM, one of the first major modern American architectural firms to promote a corporate face, has continued to be a ‘massive and dynamically creative commercial force’ designing the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa in Dubai, their commission for a new green district, Green Tech City, in Hanoi, Vietnam, and SOM was selected to design New York City’s (and the State’s) first Net Zero Energy school building, PS 62 located in Staten Island.
In 2009 SOM was recognized for just that when they were included in Fast Company’s annual list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” ranked (the only AEC company on the ranking), amongst companies such as Google and Apple. And they were also rated (by Fast Company) as number one on its list of the 10 most innovative architecture firms.
