Just in time for the holiday shopping season, a new list from therichest.com has ranked the world’s top ten architects in terms of their total net worth.
Big A architecture remunerates extraordinarily well for some, with the total list’s net worth nearing three-quarters of a billion USD.
Norman Foster took the top spot with an estimated net worth amounting to $250 million. The outspoken 86-year-old has had a windfall of big development contracts in the past few years, which has helped him maintain the position he has held for parts of the last two decades.
Frank Gehry came in a distant second with around $100 million in total worth. Gehry was followed quickly by Moshe Safdie, who also hit the $100 mark, although it was not clear which methodology was used to delineate the two (some publicized estimates have Safdie’s worth significantly higher at around $150 million). Oculus designer Santiago Calatrava was the only other architect to hit the nine-figure plateau. His estimated net worth is also $100 million, according to the website.
The estate of Zaha Hadid appears to have lost a significant amount of value since the architect’s untimely death in 2016. Her estimated net worth now hovers around $95 million, down from a reported $220–240 million range only a few short years ago.
Renzo Piano is up to about $25 million, mirroring the gains of Bjarke Ingels, who is now said to be worth around $17 million, up from about $5–$10 million according to reports published as recently as July.
Kongjian Yu was the only landscape architect to make the list with a net worth squarely at $15 million. Yu was followed by Maya Lin, who is said to be worth about $12 million. David Adjaye rounded out the list with total career earnings of around $10 million.
The overall distribution of income, however, is far off what many consider it should be, leading to the creation of professional practice advocacy groups like The Architecture Lobby and Architecture is Free, among many others. For further reference, our handy Architecture Salary Poll helps to give a better picture of where you stack up against the mean industry-wide.
5 Comments
The writer(s) of the article fail to describe the methodology used to arrive at any of these numbers. They also use the terms "net worth" to rank some people and "income" for others, which is just stupid. The two terms don't mean the same thing.
Not even showbiz and sports fans take that website seriously LMAO.
Are we seriously using therichest.com as the source for a whole article? Christ on a bike.
It was circa 2008 the top 10% of firms accounted for 90% of fee income (in the UK) last time this was drawn attention to and I was paying attention, this was around 2008/09/10 so you're saying its got worse?
Brexit obviously has a baring on the potential for UK practices'. I also read an article fairly recently that explained basically 40% of all the money that ever existed was printed in Covid, that factoid could be utter bullshit but also it's plausible.
It's even more unbalanced when you use a lens of any other cultural import; music, food and art do not suffer from the long tail malaise.
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