Great thread.  Ive had an eye on this one for a while...

http://www.realities-united.de/

How about something like this:

http://www.goskwerl.com/

Partisans of Canada seem to be doing interesting urban research work in addition to conventional projects

- http://www.partisanprojects.com/

So in the spirit of keeping this thread a useful resource, thanks to the contributions of several people, I have compiled the running list of suggestions and links provided so far (organized chronologically). Wish there was a better way to organize this but hope it helps. Keep the suggestions coming!

Place Taylor

Made NYC

LMNts

NBBJ

Woods Bagot

Rex Architects

Mode lab

SO-IL

MOS

Anne Holtrop

RAAAF

Jonathan Segel

EM2N

ZanderRoth

SHoP

Terraform ONE

New Lab

Genspace

Mitch McEwen

Jimenez Lai (Bureau Spectacular)

Alvin Huang (Synthesis Design + Architecture)

Susan Surface

Bob Sheil (w/sixteen*makers)

ScanLAB Projects

Perry Kulper

Bryan Cantley

Nat Chard

Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture (Book)

Theaster Gates 

Rural Studio

Foam DAO

Assemble Studio

MASS Design Group

People's Architecture Office

Kasita

Samara (AirBnB)

Neri Oxman

DDG

WeWork (spatial analytics)

Well Into the 21st century: The Architectures of Post-Capitalism (book)

Backcountry Hut Company (modular made to order houses)

Realties United

GoSkwerl

Partisan Projects

Gluck+

sameolddoctor,

Can I ask if you have worked with goskwerl ? Or if anybody has, sounds like an interesting proposition, especially for those who need to freelance, due to personal circumstances. I just checked it out and I can't access the kind of jobs they have, w/o registering....thanks..

what about the non-architects, Heatherwick et al? great list techtonic. 

definitely  Woods Bagot, NBBJ w/ Andrew Heumann. Albeit corporate, these firms have impacted the practice in a tangible manner, through his computational leadership.

one that is missing is KieranTimberlake, and their advancement of a performance based research practice 

Architecture 00

Studio Weave

I am not a fan of Karim Rashid's work but looks like he's also going the route of consolidating the developer+arch firm model (Kurv Architecture) to have his projects realized. It will be interesting to see if he is able to get more of his work built as a result because regardless of arguments over aesthetics, we could possibly learn a thing or two from Rashid's business sensibilities...

Thanks jimimimi, looking into Architecture 00 I found the Wikihouse foundation which is an ambitious and interesting concept. An open source architectural knowledge platform is something everyone could use

Take a look at Proactive Practices (proactivepractices.org) and Architect & Developer (architectanddeveloper.com). They feature some firms looking at practice in a different way...