One of the Most Influential Living Turkish Architects

Besides world famous CNN, America Online, and Time Warner, these twin towers also house the 5-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel with 260 guest rooms, 225 luxurious residences, ballrooms, restaurants, and shops. Furthermore, a jazz club in this building to be named after Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun.

A PARTNER OF A WORLD GIANT
Abadan is currently a partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) Company, one of the top three architect firms in the world by its trade volume. He has been with the company for 29 years. We will not be able to fit SOM’s entire project list on this page, but the following are some of the major designs of this firm that was established in 1936: the highest structure in the U.S. - Chicago’s Sears Tower and John Hancock Tower; the pioneer in office design architecture - NYC’s Lever House; U.S. Air Force Academy; Euro Disney, Paris, and Bank of America Center in San Francisco. Hilton Istanbul is also one of SOM’s architectural products. To date, the SOM architecture team has received over 1000 design awards and brought to fruition over 10,000 projects in 40 countries.

PROJECTS IN SIX CONTINENTS
Abadan was born in 1958 in Ankara to an academician couple, Yavuz & Nermin Abadan. Part of his education was in Germany but he received a high school diploma from Istanbul Robert College. Both of his undergraduate and graduate degrees were from Cornell University. Mr. Abadan is not just an architect with projects in the U.S.; he placed his signature on major designs in all the continents of the world with the exception of Antarctica.

The Islamic Cultural Center, the first mosque to be built in New York by contributions of all Islamic UN member countries, is also an Abadan design. With the responsibility of a project that represents the entire Islamic universe, Mr. Abadan stated, “I based the design on all Islamic countries, not just on an architectural features of one country.”


ABADAN’S SIGNATURE DESIGNS
- John Jay College of Criminal Justice - Expansion Project (New York, New York)
- Lotte World II (Seoul, South Korea)
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center
(New York, New York)
- UBS Warburg Center (Stamford, Connecticut)
- JP Morgan’s Abrill Center and Birmann 29 (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- The Inpar Development (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
- Rio Office Park (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
- Birmann 24 (Santiago, Chile)
- Tzu Chi Cultural Campus (Hualien, Taiwan)
- Aztec West Business Park, Canary Wharf, Chase Manhattan Bank (London, England)
- New office buildings for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) (Cairo, Egypt)
- American Business Center (Berlin, Germany)
- The Philippine American Life Insurance Building, the World Centre and Petron Mega Plaza (Manila, Philippines)
- Harlem USA Mall and Business Center (Harlem, New York)
- The Milstein Hospital Building. (New York)
- Kings County Hospital Center. (Brooklyn, New York)
- Various projects for St. Luke’s / Roosevelt Hospital. (New York)
- Various projects for Lenox Hill Hospital. (New York)  
- Mount Sinai Medical Center (New York)
- Tokyo Midtown  (Tokyo, Japan)
- AIG Tower (Hong Kong, China)

THE OTHER NOMINEES
- Aydin Senkut – Founder and President of Felicis Ventures, Angel Investor
- Leon Abudaram – Chief Technology Officer of Citi Capital
- Nur Ercan Magden – General Manager of The Marmara Manhattan