A pop-up exhibition of Skidmore Owings and Merrill design documents, models and related project ephemera for some of the firm’s most noteworthy assignments opened at Chicago’s Ace Hotel on Sept. 10. The stars of the exhibit, entitled SOM: Engineering X [Art x Architecture], are the concepts and forms of more than 30 of the firm’s famous designs, including Chicago’s Sears Tower and the Burj Al Khalifa in Dubai, with models shown in 1:500 scale. Hand-drawn sketches, interactive sculpture and video also inform viewers about each project on display. “We decided to make them all the same scale and only show the structure,” says SOM structural engineering partner William F. Baker. “We did that based on Myron Goldsmith’s 1959 IIT scale thesis, ‘The Tall Building: The Effects of Scale.’ You can see how each functions in relation.”

The exhibition also focuses on SOM’s tradition of collaboration with visual artists. The exhibit features models, drawings and visual art from projects created by Pablo Picasso, James Turrell, Jaume Plensa, James Carpenter, Janet Echelman and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. Presented with Mana Contemporary Chicago in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the exhibit runs through Jan. 7, 2018.