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In a cavernous marbled room, the receptionist at Skidmore Owings & Merrill is busy with the office message center and switchboard, almost apologizing to a visitor for her divided attention, she offers, "There used to be another girl here with me."
But while gesturing toward the empty chair and idle phone at the other end of the desk, she admits the volume of calls is hardly what it used to be.
SOM's Manhattan headquarters has shrunk to 175 employees from 400. The worldwide roster has been halved to about 750. Those are perhaps only the most obvious changes at the architectural firm.
David Childs. the 22-year SOM veteran and star architect who took over as chairman two years ago, has overhauled the firm. once revered as the "IBM of architecture." With the aid of myriad consultants, he renegotiated SOM's office leases across the country and worked out lending agreements with the firm's banks.
Facing a sea of empty draft boards, he took SOM back to its past in public and institutional architecture. It is almost unheard of for an architect of Mr. Childs' caliber to be saddled with heavy management duties and the "vision thing." But Mr. Childs is no ordinary talent.
"He's the ideal architect," says Philip Johnson, award-winning principal of Manhattan-based Philip Johnson Architects, "a wunderkind."
Mr. Childs puts it differently. "It's been a painful chapter in my professional career," he says. "But if something is for the good of the firm and you don't want to do it, you really have to question your whole career and reason for being."
There is little doubt Mr. Childs has brought SOM through hard times and that it is winning impressive business. But Mr. Childs will relinquish the chairmanship this year and whether either his success will endure remains far from certain.