ZGF Architects tops 2016's Architect 50 "top firms of the year"

2016-09-08T12:35:00-04:00

Beating out SOM and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the Portland-based firm ZGF Architects has taken the number one spot in Architect Magazine's annual ranking of the fifty best architectural firms. The ranking, which evaluates firms using the criteria of Business, Sustainability, and Design, listed William Rawn Associates as achieving the highest score in business, while Marlon Blackwell Architects nabbed the highest design ranking.

ZGF, which had the highest sustainability score, is known chiefly for its healthcare and hospitality buildings, including the Federal Center South Building 1202, which won the AIA COTE 2015 Top Ten Plus Award. Since its founding, the firm has added five additional offices in the U.S. and Canada, all of which follow a design philosophy that "is centered on the premise that design excellence should be reflected in each and every aspect of a building—its fit with the community, its function and relationship to its users, its building systems, and i...

Architect's Top 50 firms include NADAAA, Gensler, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill

2015-09-09T14:12:00-04:00

We updated our methodology to include new metrics: percentage of women and minority designers; range and value of employee benefits; rate of employee turnover.

What defines a successful architectural firm? For Architect Magazine, it's a blend of diversity in staffing, sustainability, and overall design savvy/business acumen. Accordingly, big names Gensler, SOM, and Perkins + Will snagged places in the top five, while Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture received the highest score overall, also taking the top spot in the category of business. In the category of design, NADAAA scored the highest; in sustainability, it was EYP Architecture & Engineering. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill were recently commissioned to design the Burj 2020, while NADAAA's founding principal Nader Tehrani was selected to be the new Dean of the Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture.

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ZGF Architects tops 2016's Architect 50 "top firms of the year"

Architect's Top 50 firms include NADAAA, Gensler, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill