Top 300 U.S. Architecture Firms of 2021

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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

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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