A Korean-born architect on Wednesday sued a major architecture firm over the design of Manhattan's One World Trade Center, claiming that the building bears a "striking similarity" to a tower he designed in 1999 while in graduate school.
Jeehoon Park accused Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of falsely claiming design credit for the 104-story One World Trade Center, whose 1,776-foot (541 m) height including the spire makes it the Western Hemisphere's tallest building.
— Reuters
Park is president of Qube Architecture, a Georgia-based practice. His design, shown below, was made when he was getting a masters from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Park is seeking unspecified damages.
According to the architect, Skidmore has access to the design through an associate partner—one of Park's thesis advisors.
It's a ten-sided prism. It's not particularly special. I don't think you can patent that.
Is the base quite similar? I can see it really well, but it doesn't look like it. Is the top similar? Not particularly.
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who was asking about most profitable type of projects?
Not surprising.
Most of the big architecture and interior firms copy designs because the firms only care about profit.
Stealing ideas starts from employees that aren't talented but want to be promoted. I have seen it first hand, that's why I won't work for big firms.
Good luck to him!
That looks very similar. Stealing designs is so rampant in architecture, have had it happen to me multiple times. At the end of the day it's difficult to persue so I just add it to my portfolio, like see for yourself. will be interested to see how this is resolved.
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
Looks almost like one design at two different sites.
It's a ten-sided prism. It's not particularly special. I don't think you can patent that.
Is the base quite similar? I can see it really well, but it doesn't look like it. Is the top similar? Not particularly.
Agree. Does this guy really think that he is the first person to think of this? I myself have sketched that form a million times, and Im sure most designers have at some point. Its almost inevitable that at some point you will rotate a square above a square base and connect the corners. Thats like the first cool thing you figure out how to do in SU.
Same thing happened to another student, Thomas Shine, from Yale, regarding the first Freedom Tower Design, and it was a student project from 1999.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/nyregion/suit-claiming-similarities-in-tower-design-can-proceed.html?_r=0
http://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/too-close-for-comfort_o
I would LOVE to see the arrogant assholes (SOM) pay up.
Here's a question no one else has asked yet... Do you think that guy built that model?
By the way, what kind of lame architectural school let students do skyscraper design as final project? Skyscraper design genre is a kind of cheesy 'Phallic sword fight' isn't it?
Why is skyscraper design cheesy phallic design? I think its better than totally worthless voronoi tesselations and the like being done as final projects in a lot of schools
+1! A throughly resolved high-rise design is a valid an academic design endeavor as any other.
At this rate some guy at UPS is going to sue Bjarke for the design of 2WTC.
Unbuilt project by Harry Weese and Asoociates, circa 1981.
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