Art Gensler, who died at his home in Mill Valley, California, on May 10, helped design hundreds of buildings around the world, but his greatest creation was the collaborative culture that helped his namesake company become a global powerhouse. What is now the world’s biggest architecture firm, with 5,000 employees in 50 offices, “was not about him,” says Andy Cohen, its co-CEO with Diane Hoskins, “but about all its people moving forward together.”
When he founded M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates Inc., in San Francisco in 1965, he never imagined the firm would surpass $1 billion in annual revenue, as it first did in 2014. With just $200 in the bank, he was still working mornings for William Wurster to make ends meet. The space he rented had a beaded curtain for a door. And the “associates” were his wife, Drue, who served as secretary, office manager, and accountant, and James Follett, a draftsman.
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