Michel Abboud

Michel Abboud is an architect and artist based in New York. He is the founding principal of SOMA Architects, an architectural firm established in 2004 in New York City. Abboud has won the AIA Gold Medal and the James Beard award in 2015,^[1] and is a two-time winner of the Architizer A+ award.^[2]

In 2010, he was awarded the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center project, infamously dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque”, with one journalist calling him ‘the most controversial architect the US has known'.^[3] The project was ultimately shelved in favor of 45 Park Place, a 665-foot condominium tower also designed by Abboud.^[4][5][6]

Located in Tribeca, New York City, the 667-foot-tall (203 m) tower’s design is characterized by an "inside-out" process which changes the neighborhood's traditional loft into a vertical modern glass structure, and re-uses the full-floor units, including lofted 16-foot (4.9 m) ceilings, and an in-unit elevator. It has full-height glass windows which provide unobstructed, 360-degree views of the city.^[7]

CALYPSO is situated entirely in the sea along the coast of Jounieh Bay in North Lebanon. With only a lateral connection to land, the residential structure is able to withstand continuous wave impacts with heights of up to 18 feet (5.5 m) without incurring breakage. The structure's unique glass envelope is the first ever to be designed as wave-proof. The design received a World Architecture Design Award in 2019.^[8]

Hailed as a “marvel of both contemporary design and ingenious problem solving",^[9] the Beirut-based showroom project was commissioned by Unilux Group. Given the challenge of working with a 7,000-square-foot (650 m²) space that was mostly underground. Abboud used the showroom's basement space to showcase lighting fixtures housed in individual niche-like wall displays from floor to ceiling. On the upper floor, Abboud used digital modeling software and a parametric design script to create an array of 1000 cubes, positioning them to create the impression of a rippling dynamic floor, walls and ceiling. The continuous, non-linear surfaces allow the ground floor space to appear larger than its originally shallow confines, while the interaction of light on the reflective cubes metaphorically reinforces the showroom's function as a provider of light.^[10][11]

Due to its location on the corner of Beirut's Ashrafieh Mar Mitr quarter, the WAVE residential site faced a series of challenges due to sun exposure, solar overheating and privacy concerns. To mitigate these problems, Abboud and his team created a type of “second skin” for the structure, which acts as a screening mechanism by utilizing a horizontal louvered system. The structure's interactive parametric design allows the depth of the louvers to be controlled by an interior program based on the level of shading and privacy required. The louver becomes thinner with the need for less privacy or more sunlight, or deeper when more privacy or shading is desired. The effect of these dynamic, parametrically generated mechanisms gives the building exterior the appearance of having organic waves. The design for WAVE, also nicknamed “The W Residences” won Abboud an Architizer A+ award in 2017.^[12]

Abboud broke records in the Middle East for his design of the most expensive structure ever to be built in Dubai.^[13]