SOM Stole One World Trade Center Design, According To Lawsuit
As the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, One World Trade Center has been instantly recognizable since it opened in 2014, but a lawsuit claims that the look was stolen.
Jeehoon Park, now the head of Qube Architecture in Georgia, claims to have come up with the design as a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1999, before it was used by international architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for One World Trade Center, the New York Post reports.
Park filed suit against SOM in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, claiming the firm had multiple different ways of getting its hands on his design, such as his graduate adviser at the time, who now works for SOM.
Park also claimed that SOM may have seen his design in the 2006 Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock romance movie "Lake House," which partially filmed in the lobby of SOM's Chicago office.
