Remembering architect David M Childs (1941-2025) and his New York skyline legacy

The American architect David M Childs has died at the age of 83. A former chairman at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Childs will be best remembered for his contribution to the never-ending history of New York’s soaring skyline, overseeing significant structures across the city.

David M. Childs: a history

Childs joined SOM in 1971, after studying at the Yale School of Architecture. By this point, the esteemed firm, named for its founders Louis Skidmore, Nathaniel Owings and John Merrill, was one of the pre-eminent exponents of the International Style. Since its founding in 1936, SOM has established itself as the architectural supplier to corporate America.

Childs began his career in the firm’s Washington office, moving to New York in 1984. His work in the capital highlighted SOM’s place at the heart of the establishment and included masterplans, the National Mall, alongside hotels for the Four Seasons and Park Hyatt groups and the HQ of National Geographic. It was in New York, however, that his ability to channel SOM’s status and reputation into some of the defining towers of the era.

Perhaps the most potent and instantly recognisable was 1 World Trade Center, a building freighted with meaning and symbolism. SOM won the competition for the centrepiece of the redeveloped site, working to Daniel Libeskind’s masterplan. Childs oversaw the design of the faceted tower, incorporating not only sustainability and security into its tapering glass form, but also ensuring it was the tallest building in the western hemisphere, at a symbolic height of 1,776 feet.

Other SOM projects overseen by Childs include 7 World Trade Center, with its incorporated electricity substation and adjoining park, the Times Square Tower and the Deutsche Bank Center on Columbus Circle, which housed the Time Warner Complex for a time. He also worked on the Moynihan Train Hall, a project two decades in the making that involved transforming a former mail hail sorting room into a new concourse for Penn Station.

Under Childs’ chairmanship at the helm, SOM’s star continued to rise throughout the 21st century, with an exhibition at London’s Design Museum in 2019 showcasing some of the many major projects it continued to be involved in around the world. Another one of Childs’ projects was the restoration of Lever House, the immaculately conceived Park Avenue skyscraper that cemented SOM’s reputation when it opened in 1952. The firm was a worthy entry in our inaugural Wallpaper* USA 300 list of those shaping the country’s creative landscape in 2023.

SOM.com