Top 300 U.S. Architecture Firms of 2021
Gensler Remains First
Renovation of Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice.
New York | Gensler Photo © Richard Barnes
For a decade, Gensler has topped Architectural Record’s annual list of the Top 300 Architecture Firms in the U.S. The company, with headquarters in San Francisco, operates 100 offices around the world and earned $1.3 billion in revenue in 2020 (a slight decrease from $1.5 billion the year before) in the face of the pandemic.
University of Virginia Hospital Expansion
Charlottesville | Perkins&Will #2
Photo © Todd Mason
New York University Special Collections Library
New York | CannonDesign #13
Photo © Scott Frances
Chicago’s Perkins&Will and Omaha-based HDR have also held onto their ranks among the Top 5. A handful of firms have made notable climbs in the list compared to the previous year. New York studio CannonDesign moved to ninth from 13th, and Portland’s ZGF Architects is 12th instead of 20th. “Much has changed in the world in the last year, but CannonDesign has continued on its trajectory,” says David Polzin, CannonDesign’s executive director of design, noting that the firm has expanded into work on software, computational tools, and modular-construction solutions.
Rainier Square
Seattle | NBBJ #16
Photo © Moris Moreno
The Heights Building
Arlington, Virginia | LEO A DALY with BIG #22
Photo © Laurian Ghintoiu
With these firms’ advances, however, comes a lowering of ranks for other firms, including Populous and IBI Group, both of which descended a few notches. Yet, despite the turbulence of this past year’s challenges, there was not a significant change among the firms in the Top 25.
Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station
New York | SOM #9
Photo © Lucas Blair Simpson
See the chart below for a ranking of the Top 25 firms. Click here for the full Top 300 Firms list (requires subscription).
Top 25 U.S. Architecture Firms of 2021
Companies are ranked by revenue (in millions of dollars) for architectural services performed in 2020. These data also appear in ENR’s Top 500 Design Firms list, which, unlike our ranking, also includes firms that do engineering exclusively.
| 2021 Rank | 2020 Rank | FIRM, U.S. HEADQUARTERS | TYPE OF FIRM | TOTAL ARCHITECTURAL REVENUE |
| 1 | 1 | Gensler Los Angeles | A | 1,320.19 |
| 2 | 2 | Perkins&Will Chicago | A | 595.07 |
| 3 | 3 | HDR Omaha | EA | 456.11 |
| 4 | 6 | HKS Dallas | A | 420.23 |
| 5 | 7 | HOK St. Louis | AE | 411 |
| 6 | 4 | Jacobs Dallas | EAC | 384.16 |
| 7 | 8 | Stantec Irvine, California | EA | 337.33 |
| 8 | 5 | AECOM Los Angeles | EA | 337 |
| 9 | 13 | CannonDesign New York | AE | 269 |
| 10 | 9 | Skidmore Owings & Merrill New York | AE | 268.3 |
| 11 | 10 | Perkins Eastman New York | A | 264 |
| 12 | 20 | ZGF Architects Portland, Oregon | A | 245.54 |
| 13 | 17 | Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC New York | A | 219.42 |
| 14 | 11 | DLR Group Minneapolis | AE | 212.4 |
| 15 | 16 | NBBJ Seattle | A | 202.2 |
| 16 | 18 | Corgan Dallas | A | 200.83 |
| 17 | 22 | LEO A DALY Omaha | AE | 194.8 |
| 18 | ** | CallisonRTKL Seattle | A | 191.2 |
| 19 | 14 | Populous Kansas City, Missouri | A | 184.04 |
| 20 | 12 | IBI Group Columbus, Ohio | AE | 182.36 |
| 21 | 24 | PBK Houston | AE | 174.8 |
| 22 | 19 | PGAL Houston | AE | 166.9 |
| 23 | 23 | SmithGroup Detroit | AE | 150.47 |
| 24 | 28 | Ware Malcomb Irvine, California | AE | 147.1 |
| 25 | 26 | Page Washington, D.C. | AE | 134.65 |
** Data not available.
| Key to firm types | |
| A | Architect |
| AE | Architect Engineer |
| EA | Engineer Architect |
| EAC | Engineer-Architect-Contractor |
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