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TRANSACT IONS PERKINS EASTMAN AND PFEIFFER PARTNERS ARCHITECTS MERGE Uniting the creative energies of two legacy firms, Perkins Eastman and Pfeiffer Partners Architects have announced their pending merger, which will combine the formidable talents, culture, and design processes of both. Perkins Eastman, a global architecture and design firm with more than 1,000 employees, has worked on projects on five continents in 60 countries. Its portfolio reflects expertise in multiple practice areas with globally-renowned strengths in healthcare, senior living, large scale mixed use, higher education, K-12, hospitality, and workplace design as well as planning, urban design, and strategic consulting. Pfeiffer, a successor firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, based in Los Angeles and New York City, is known for its depth of experience in the arts, libraries, historic preservation, renovations, adaptive reuse, and interior design as well as creative design solutions. This mutually-beneficial merger provides a platform for collaboration across disciplines and offices, combining the opportunity to draw on the considerable market credibility, resources, and geographic reach that Perkins Eastman provides with the design expertise in programming, planning, architecture, and interior design that Pfeiffer offers. The two firms share a strong commitment to client service, mentoring, research, and design innovation. “This merger is an important milestone in our long-term plans to build a firm that can offer the breath of design and thought leadership our clients are seeking,” says Bradford Perkins, FAIA, chairman of Perkins Eastman. “Pfeiffer brings internationally-recognized experience and skills in key areas – all of which complement Perkins Eastman’s established
capabilities. We believe this new union will open up exciting new opportunities for all of us.” “Joining forces with Perkins Eastman will allow Pfeiffer to continue to focus on our core areas while expanding our geographic and typological reach,” says William Murray, FAIA, a founding principal of Pfeiffer. “For some time, our principals have discussed how best to grow our practice on both coasts as well as internationally, while retaining our identity and commitment to design excellence. When Brad approached us about a potential merger, the idea very much aligned with our long-term goals. Perkins Eastman, like Pfeiffer, offers a broad range of architectural solutions; not choosing to practice a particular architectural style but instead creating dynamic new environments that respond to the physical, cultural, and social context in which they’re located. The firm is also committed to a process of collaboration, client service, and professional growth of its staff. They are the perfect fit for us.” Pfeiffer, now known as Pfeiffer – a Perkins Eastman studio, will lead key practice areas in the combined firm, including in the arts, libraries, and renovation/preservation/ adaptable reuse, joining Perkins Eastman leaders in HEST (higher education/science and technology), healthcare, senior living, large scale mixed use, K-12, hospitality, and workplace design. While the firms’ New York studios will co-locate, their respective studios in Los Angeles, which are close to one another, will physically remain where they are, while being technologically connected. The teams look forward to working collaboratively on joint projects. Perkins Eastman is a global design firm founded on the belief that design can have a direct and positive impact on people’s lives.
The firm’s award-winning practice draws on its 1,000 professionals networked across 19 studios worldwide. By keeping the user’s needs foremost in the design process, the firm enhances the human experience across the spectrum of the built environment. Since November of 2019, the firm has completed three state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California, The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in New York, New York, and MarinHealth Medical Center in Greenbrae, California. Perkins Eastman’s Chicago studio was recently named the first project in Illinois, one of only six in the U.S., and one of only 35 worldwide to become WELL v.2 Platinum Certified. Pfeiffer is a U.S. design firm whose projects for cultural and educational clients marry smart planning with unusually effective client and team engagement for imaginative architectural solutions. Pfeiffer’s professionals – architects, planners, and interior designers, – have been drawn together by a shared philosophy regarding the built environment. The firm is about architecture, planning, and interior design realized in a cross-disciplinary process to design human experience in places that bring people together. Strong in library projects, Pfeiffer designed one of the nation’s first net zero 24/7 academic libraries, Colorado College’s Tutt Library – an innovative renovation and expansion recognized with several awards, among them the 2019 AIA/LA Library Building Award. The firm has recently completed the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Warner IMIG Music Building addition and the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center at Gonzaga University.
project managers. It’s in a newly-published project development manual and took about a year to produce. We launched a project development department and added some corporate resources. We found that many project managers felt they had to do everything well, so we created a robust project manger assistant program to assist with more administrative functions and to help create consistency across the board. We have six areas of excellence that we focus on and project management is one of them. We also use “Strength Finders” to help project managers understand where their strengths truly lie. together.’ It’s nine words all together, but when you take it apart, it’s meant literally.” “Trust plays into our overall mission statement: ‘Building community by creating inventive, relevant built environments
BUILDING COMMUNITY, from page 7
JE: When I came on board as CEO, we named new roles and assembled a new executive leadership team. We talk about this a lot. We’ve revamped a lot of processes and gotten buy-in, company-wide. That’s important. We focus on being an open and transparent business. It starts with the board, partners, and associates and trickles down to the rest of the staff. To have successful change management you have to have trust. You have to tell the “why” behind change and communicate that change is happening for a reason – not just change for change sake. Change management has to be very deliberate and when people embrace it, energy comes from it. TZL: Research shows that PMs are overworked, understaffed, and that many firms do not have formal training programs for PMs. What is your firm doing to support its PMs? JE: We’ve just created a new set of best practices for
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THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 31, 2021, ISSUE 1394
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