Michel Abboud | SOMA was the guest artist of Downtown Dubai at the occasion of Dubai Design Week. Facing the main entrance of the fair pavilion, he created a striking Parametric Sculptures Installation consisting of seven unique individual works of art that collectively provoked a dialogue between visitors and the art pieces as they walked in.

Principal Michel Abboud was on hand at this year's CityScape Dubai at the unveiling of our project One at Palm Jumeirah.

One at Palm will rise at the entrance to Palm Jumeirah, one of Dubai’s artificial archipelagos. It consists of 90 exclusive residences, ranging from 270 to 2,000 sqm. In addition to SOMA, One at Palm is being created by an international team of cutting edge taste-makers. Omniyat sought the most prominent players in each discipline, and selected SOMA as architect, world renowned Vladimir Djorovic as landscape architect, and Japanese firm Superpotato for the interiors.

China's Sinovision's InFocus interviews SOMA Designer Dan Rapoport at the 2015 3D Print Design Show in the Javits Center in NYC.

Michel Abboud Accepts the award for Best Restaurant Design in North America at the James Beard Awards, May 4th, 2015

Award for project Workshop Kitchen & Bar

The Unilux Group lighting showroom in Beirut, Lebanon, was designed by NY architect Michel Abboud and is one of the most recent projects of NYC-based international architecture firm SOMA.

SOMA IS REBRANDING AS “BIGGER” AND HAS BIG DREAMS OF BREAKING INTO STARCHITECT BIG LEAGUES

According to the principal, Michel Abboud, “SOMA has been crafting great architecture during the last decade but we still don’t have the name recognition we’re looking for. We pride ourselves on understanding what our clients love and what the architecture community loves is architecture firms named after sizes. From XL, BIG, HUGE, LARGE and SMALL, what architecture firms really need is a name that reflects their ego, and it’s our time we show ours. Some may say less is more, we say bigger is better.”

The transition is already underway. Though their website is still www.soma.us you can witness the transition on their social media platforms and their unique new logo.

Open Table: Public Matters: New York Architecture after 9/11

A roundtable discussion hosted by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture with Michel Abboud, Amale Andraos, Robert Beauregard, Andrew Bernheimer, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Karen Fairbanks, Laurie Hawkinson, Florian Idenburg, Laura Kurgan, David Lewis, Scott Marble, Gregg Pasquarelli, Susan Rodriguez, Leopoldo Sguera, David Smiley, David Stark, Bernard Tschumi, Marc Tsurumaki, Henry Smith-Miller, and Dan Wood.

Moderated by Reinhold Martin, GSAPP, and organized by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture

A conversation over drinks and around a table. Due to room-capacity restrictions, overflow seating and extra refreshments will be accommodated in adjacent spaces with simulcast coverage.

In light of the banning of minarets in Switzerland by public referendum, and the furor in America's response to the siting of a new Islamic culture centre in downtown New York City, architecture's pol itical and social role has become a renewed site of contest. Using such examples of the challenges facing contemporary religious buildings as a catalyst for debate, Faith in the City aims to further the discussion of the social, political and symbolic role of contemporary faith buildings. through a close exploration of the mosque's changing role in the "Western" world.

In partnership with Openvizor and Arts Council England's Arts & Islam programme.

Park51 is a cultural project designed by NY architect Michel Abboud for SOMA Architects. Park51 is the Islamic Community Center and prayer space is located in Lower Manhattan, a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero.

Due to the strong controversy provoked by the project, the true challenge was to create a piece of architecture that would propose a platform for mediation of social, cultural, urban and political differences in one coherent environment that would equally cater for all parties. The 22-storey building façade of interconnected webbing takes root in the historical fundamentals of Islamic pattern making. Using a parametric scripting tool written specifically for this exercise using advanced modeling software, we were able to manipulate the density of the geometries in real-time by adapting the skin to the interior program, privacy, and daylight control.

Watch SOMA Architects principal, Michel Abboud, discuss Park51 project in the Faith in the City of New York panel.