In early january, Adrian Smith was holding out hope that his newly founded firm, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG), was on the verge of getting its first big break. By month's end, jaws had dropped at the startling announcement that AS+GG had won the international competition (against finalists Foster + Partners, Atkins, Murphy/Jahn, and the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill [SOM]) for the Masdar Headquarters, a 1.5-million-square-foot complex in Abu Dhabi. (See "Positive Energy," June 2008, page 74.) It was the first in a series of developments that made 2008 a banner year for the firm-and made Smith the year's comeback kid.rnNot that Smith is by any means a young buck. In fact, it was his age -just a few years shy of mandatory retirement at 65-that prompted him to jump ship from SOM in late 2006 and launch Chicago-based AS+GG with partners Gordon Gill and Robert Forest, also SOM alums.
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