Founding Partners

Mustafa Kemal Abadan is a design partner in the architectural firm of Skidmore Owings and Merrill LLP specializing in complex and challenging projects. Mustafa was raised and educated in Turkey, Germany and the United States. As an undergraduate student in Cornell University’s Architecture program (Bachelor of Architecture 1982), he distinguished himself by winning the Art Gensler Award for Design Excellence and the Eschweiler Prize for Scholastic Excellence in Design, formulating the foundations for his modernist architectural convictions. As a graduate student pursuing his Master of Architecture in Urban Design, Mustafa studied with Colin Rowe and exhibited an early predilection for the urban projects which would later come to define his career (Master of Architecture in Urban Design 1984).

Mustafa designed SOM’s first completed commercial buildings in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Brazil, Chile and Kazakhstan. Mustafa takes a leadership position in architectural education through continuous involvement as a teacher, juror and longstanding member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at Cornell. As the Chairman of the SOM Foundation since 2005, he has elevated the stature of the annual Student Traveling Fellowships He has served as a selection panelist for the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans since 2000, and as a lecturer at Cornell, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, and several international schools of architecture for the past 15 years.

Numerous organization and institutions have recognized Mustafa’s contribution to architecture with awards and honors including the American Institute of Architects, Chicago Athenaeum, Progressive Architecture, Metropolis and the Architectural Review. In addition, his projects were featured at the Venice and São Paolo Architecture Biennales, at the Skyscraper Museum and Center for Architecture in New York, the New York Public Library, and at a recent exhibition in Tokyo featuring SOM’s current work.