Perkins Eastman and Pfeiffer Partners Architects merge

New York, N.Y. (March 16, 2021) Perkins Eastman and Pfeiffer Partners Architects have announced their pending merger.

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: 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 Principals will lead key practice areas in the arts, libraries, and renovation/preservation, complementing Perkins Eastman's work in higher education, science & technology, healthcare, senior living, large scale mixed-use, K-12, hospitality, and workplace design.

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.

The merger provides a platform for collaboration across disciplines and offices, combining the opportunity to draw on the 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.

'AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE IN OUR LONG-TERM PLANS'

“This merger is an important milestone in our long-term plans to build a firm that can offer the breadth 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.” 

“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," said Murray. "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 & 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.

ABOUT PERKINS EASTMAN

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 2019, the firm has completed three state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA, The David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in New York, NY, and MarinHealth Medical Center in Greenbrae, CA. Perkins Eastman’s Chicago studio was recently named the first project in Illinois, 1 of only 6 in the U.S., and 1 of only 35 worldwide to become WELL certified at the Platinum level under WELL v2 pilot. For more information: www.perkinseastman.com.

MORE ABOUT PFEIFFER 

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.