Yesterday, the namesake founder of the world’s largest architecture firm, Art Gensler, FAIA, passed away at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., at the age of 85. During his 65-year career, Gensler was distinguished by a belief in collaboration, design education, career advancement, and a dedication to clients, which formed the unique and lasting culture he established at his firm. Though he had stepped down as the CEO of Gensler (the firm) in 2005 and as the chairman in 2010, he continued to serve as an adviser until his death on May 10.
In 1965, Gensler founded M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates in San Francisco with his wife Drucilla "Drue" Cortell Gensler (who died in 2017) and their associate James Follett. Today the firm operates in 50 countries around the world, employs more than 6,000 designers and staff members, and generates an annual revenue of $1.5 billion.
Born in New York in 1935, Gensler wanted to be an architect since he was 5 or 6 years old. “I have no idea why,” he recalled in an 2018 interview with the Nob Hill Gazette in San Francisco. “I played with blocks, erector sets and Lincoln Logs. I just really love buildings. It wasn’t until later that I realized how much I love doing interiors, too, because they really touch people’s lives.”
He studied architecture at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning with Aldo Giurgola, Tom Canfield, and Dean Mackasey. “They were really down-to-earth, practical people who were actually building buildings that were realistic, usable buildings,” Gensler said in a 2014 interview with historian Martin Meeker from the University of California Berkeley. Gensler received his B.Arch. in 1958, a year after he married Drue Cortell. After working in New York and Jamaica, they moved to San Francisco in 1962.
Gensler was attracted to California contemporary domestic architecture and the work of Gordon Drake, in particular. “He did these sort of redwood homes that I just thought were the cat’s meow,” he told Meeker. He worked for a few architectural firms, including Wurster, Bernardi, and Emmons, where he played a lead role in establishing the design standards for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, then under construction.
Eventually, Gensler expressed to his boss William Wurster that, though he lacked capital, he wanted to establish his own firm. With Wurster’s blessing, Gensler worked for Wurster in the morning and then became his own boss in the afternoon, working on everything from business development to the actual construction drawings.
Back in 1965, Gensler the firm comprised a one-room office, one draftsman, and $200 in the bank. “Starting out, my goal was to have six employees and do garage remodels,” Gensler said in the 2018 Nob Hill Gazette interview.. “What did I know?”
The firm got its start by focusing on work that fell below the radar screen for many architects —space planning and interiors. Early in his career, Gensler recognized the need for a new architectural discipline, which came to be known as tenant development. Beginning with the Alcoa Building (now One Maritime Plaza) in San Francisco, the firm developed the programming practices that have become the framework for interior architectural projects throughout the profession. “I got really into taking the program and helping people understand what a program really meant,” Gensler said in the 2014 interview with Berkeley's Meeker. “We started the phrase that we design from the inside out, which most people are designing from the outside in.”
Gensler’s firm grew rapidly with offices opening around the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s, and then overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. By the early 2000s, it was the largest architecture and design company headquartered in the U.S. Gensler’s greatest hits are many: a 35-year long term partnership with San Francisco International Airport that has transformed the terminals; the revamp of the JetBlue T5 terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2004; and, more recently, the interiors for the new Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, The U.S. Embassy in London, and Goodyear's Global Headquarters in Akron, Ohio.
Art Gensler was a fellow of The American Institute of Architects and the International Interior Design Association. In 2016, he received a Design Futures Council Lifetime Achievement Award and the Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year Award. For all the accolades, Gensler said the work and the firm were not about him. “It never was,” he said in a video tribute published by his firm. “It's about who we call a constellation of stars. ... It takes all of us to do a project.”
In 2016, ARCHITECT interviewed Art Gensler about his firm's rise and leadership principles in architecture he espoused in his 2015 manifesto Art’s Principles: 50 Years of Hard-Learned Lessons in Building a World-Class Professional Services Firm (Wilson Lafferty, 2015).
