Mega Merger: Perkins&Will And A+I Forge A Bold New Era

We’re curious cats here at Interior Design, and the news of a design-firm merger or acquisition inevitably begs certain questions. What strategic edge will this confer to each studio? What novel commissions might this marriage unlock? Which talents will be elevated to a higher platform? Will this linkage spark a rebranding? And, most importantly, how does this partnership reflect and/or reinforce broader industry forces—i.e., what does this comingling of skills and resources say about our particular design moment?

Such thoughts (plus “wow…that’s cool!”) bubbled up when we got the scoop about one of the more promising couplings in recent memory, that of Perkins&Will—second-largest U.S. design firm, number three on Interior Design’s Top 100 Giants ranking, a leader with expertise in sectors from life sciences to government—with Architecture Plus Information (A+I), the New York studio behind strategy-led, experience-driven, zeitgeist-defining workplaces. The merger, effective this week and announced today, gives both parties something they were actively seeking. Perkins&Will desired to expand its NYC presence, not least to capitalize on the city’s commercial real-estate boom, replete with “clients eager to create next-level, data-driven workplaces,” says CEO Phil Harrison.

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Bringing A+I into the fold provides Perkins&Will with a deep bench of strategic thinkers in that vertical who also excel at the branding side of things. The union creates Perkins&Will’s first in-house branded-environments practice in New York and effectively doubles the size of its Big Apple roster, to almost 180—a figure Harrison has found to be the sweet spot for innovation. The 90-year-old firm also acquires a dynamic leader in Kate Thatcher, CEO of A+I, who will serve as managing director of Perkins&Will’s Manhattan and Philadelphia locations. “Together, we can now offer the market so much more, including the ability to apply learnings from our New York clients—who have been way out in front on return-to-workplace trends—across a much broader platform and geographic footprint,” Thatcher notes.

Indeed, A+I, cofounded by Interior Design Hall of Fame members Brad Zizmor and Dag Folger, gains bandwidth, scale, and access to a more expansive, multidisciplinary designer and research network at a time when they were scoring exciting commissions across the country that stretched their capacity as a single-office, 80-person company. The merger also allows the A+I team to bring its holistic, data-driven approach to sectors like higher ed, healthcare, and transit they’ve had their eye on for some time. “A+I is as much as an idea as a firm; it’s a way of thinking,” Zizmor notes. He explains that the invite to link up came, cannily, during a phase when A+I was actively future-planning, elevating its next-gen leaders and laying the groundwork for continued growth, an effort now supercharged. “Particularly in the last year, clients are coming out of hibernation and looking for a new office model,” Folger notes. “This relationship with Perkins&Will allows us to execute that at scale, which will change the mathematics of workplace performance and happiness.”

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Although the merger is freshly inked, the firms’ relationship is longer standing, having recently begun collaborating on projects that are in the pipeline (stay tuned!). And they’ve already been leveraging their collective brain trust in a more-than-the-sum-of-its parts alchemy. A+I-ers are thrilled, says Thatcher, to be part of a company so conscientious about “carving out time for employees to think about big problems.” Explains Harrison, “To create value for clients, you have to constantly reinvent the nature of design and invest in the whole ecosystem of research, mentorship, technology and leadership development. Our business philosophy is to set aside time for reinvention”—versus simply optimizing to maximize billable hours (and thus burnout). “That results in a culture of knowledge transfer and curiosity that refuels design.” It’s optimistic to hear how both teams—now one—are doubling down on data science, strategy, and reflection at a time when, more than ever, our complex design challenges demand deep analysis and the special spark of the human, nonmachine mind.