A Georgia-based architect, Jeehoon Park, AIA, has filed suit against Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for copyright infringement and false advertising of their One World Trade Center tower design. Park alleges that SOM based their design on his 1999 graduate thesis from the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in Chicago, asserting that his thesis adviser and former SOM architectural engineer and associate partner Ahmad Abdelrazaq saw the work prior to the Freedom Tower conceptualization. By 2004 Abdelrazaq had left SOM, and the tower design was made formally unveiled in 2005.
According to the civil action file, Park’s 122-story tower design is similar to the Freedom Tower for “substantially similar exterior cross-sectional shapes…at comparable floor levels.”
A SOM spokesperson released the following statement to Fast Co. Design:
One World Trade Center is arguably the highest profile project built in the world in recent memory, and these types of projects often attract people who deceptively claim ownership of the design. This lawsuit filed yesterday is particularly suspect, because he is filing suit in June of 2017 about a design that was first unveiled publicly in June 2005 and that was completed and leased in 2013.
The form of One World Trade Center is a simple and iconic geometric form and SOM has shown, countless times now, the origins of its concept and the development of its design. This lawsuit feels like an attempt to get attention or money and we are certain this claim will be found to be
baseless.
See the complete civil action below:
Jeehoon Park Suit Against SOM by architectmag on Scribd
