🗼The World's Largest Architecture Firm

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Good morning! It's Tuesday, April 16th. Today’s post looks at Gensler, the architecture and design firm that’s maintained industry dominance for decades!

THE FEATURE

🗼The World's Largest Architecture Firm

Last year, Gensler generated $1.84B in revenue, making it the world's largest architecture and design firm. While you may not know the name, Gensler has designed buildings ranging from the San Francisco International Airport to the first Apple stores. 

Founded in the 1960s, Gensler has maintained its industry-leading position by empowering top talent and taking on cutting-edge projects— and now it's taking that approach to corporate real estate and the housing crisis. 

Let's dive in!

So, What's the Business?

Art Gensler founded his practice in San Francisco in 1965 with $200 in the bank and three employees: himself, his wife, and their associate James Follett.

Despite those humble beginnings, Gensler found massive success in the 70s and 80s thanks to economic growth, urbanization, and, more importantly, Art's unique business philosophies. 

Art emphasized a client-first design approach. To execute it, he believed that a collaborative business environment in which everyone had a stake in the outcome was necessary. Here are three objectives that helped Art shape and expand his firm: 

• Hire top talent

• Allow them to pursue personal passions

• Give them a financial stake in the business (profit sharing + shared equity)

That recipe created a cutting-edge design firm with a track record of excellence in just a few years. And that early success didn't slow down:

• 1967: Designed the interior of the Alcoa Building

• 1969: Designed the interior of the Bank of America Building 

• 1972: Opened an office in Houston

• 1979: Designed Mobil Oil corporate headquarters

• 1988: Opened first overseas office in London

By the early 2000s, Gensler was the largest architecture and design company headquartered in the US, and its footprint extended across Europe and into Asia. 

With Gensler's focus on acquiring industry-leading talent and giving them creative freedom, the architecture firm has always been involved in the biggest projects, as seen in their 2013 construction of the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building and the second-tallest in the world. 

How They Win: Revamping Post-Pandemic Corporate Real Estate

Art Gesler passed away in 2021, but his architecture firm has maintained its core practice of empowering employees to pursue what excites them. That freedom led Canadian architect Steven Paynter and his team at Gensler to take on one of society's biggest problems: the housing crisis. 

During the early days of the pandemic, Paynter saw the adoption of virtual work and the resulting disuse of corporate real estate. Knowing some of Gensler's clients may want to convert their properties, he developed a cost-effective algorithm that identified corporate structures ideal for residential conversion. 

Paynter's algorithm evaluates 150 aspects of a building's layout and design and determines its conversion viability score in a couple of hours. 

Today, that algorithm has led to the conversion approval for 13 buildings in Calgary, Canada, and five of them are set to be finished this year. Gesler has also licensed the tool out to developers and local governments around the world, who've used it for over 1,200 building evaluations and 150 conversion starts. 

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has also praised Gensler for addressing the city's housing crisis- the firm is turning 160 Water Street in Manhattan's Financial District into 588 residential units. 

By creating an environment for creativity to flourish, it's not a surprise that Gensler has positioned itself as a problem solver in the post-pandemic housing crisis. 

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