San Francisco, 1965.

Gensler carries the surname of its founder, Art Gensler. The British trade title arc, in a report published on 12 May 2021, said he grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from Cornell University’s College of Architecture in 1958. After university, it said, he moved to California on the advice of his mentor, the architecture critic Henry Hill, and worked for the architect William Wurster while setting up his own practice.

That practice dates from 1965. arc said Art Gensler founded it in San Francisco alongside his wife Drue and James Follett, and English Wikipedia names the same three founders. The US commercial property news site Bisnow, reporting on 10 May 2021, quoted his son David Gensler, who told the San Francisco Chronicle that his father started the practice in the back of another firm’s office in 1965, using sawhorses and doors to set up drafting tables. Bisnow also quoted an interview Art Gensler gave to the Nob Hill Gazette in 2018, in which he said that when starting out his goal was a small office doing garage remodels.

The early work was inside other architects’ buildings. arc said the firm got its start designing interiors for corporate offices in San Francisco towers, including the Bank of America Center, since renamed 555 California Street, and the Alcoa Building, now One Maritime Plaza. Wikipedia dates those two commissions to 1969 and 1967 respectively, and says the practice originally focused on corporate interiors for newly constructed office buildings. arc said the firm’s first office was on Clay Street in San Francisco.

Wikipedia says the practice has since spread into many other kinds of work, among them commercial office buildings, retail centres, airports, education buildings, entertainment complexes, planning and urban design, consulting and brand design. The firm that began by fitting out offices now also works on identities for clients.

One surname, many cities.

Gensler is a single surname, short enough to sit on a door, a drawing title block or a business card without abbreviation. It has never been a list of partners in the way that many older architecture practices are named, and it has stayed the same while the firm has spread to other cities and countries. The founders’ other names, Drue Gensler and James Follett, do not appear in it.

The offices followed clients. Wikipedia says that in 1972 the firm opened an office in Houston to provide interior design services for the corporate headquarters of the Pennzoil company, and that in 1979 it opened its New York office to work on the corporate headquarters of Mobil Oil. arc gave the same sequence in May 2021: Houston in 1972, followed by New York in 1979.

The first offices outside the United States came later. arc said the firm opened its London office in 1988, followed by studios in Japan and Hong Kong in 1993, and its first Chinese office in Shanghai in 2002. Wikipedia names the Japanese office as Tokyo and gives the same years. Each new office carried the same name, so the surname of a San Francisco founder became the name the firm used in every city it entered.

arc listed a range of projects from the following decades: the Shanghai Tower, the long-term renovation of San Francisco International Airport, the renovation and expansion of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, offices for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the London Stock Exchange, and the interiors of the new US Embassy in London. Wikipedia dates the firm’s work at San Francisco International Airport to the Central Terminal project of 1980, followed by renovations of later terminals.

The name also labels the firm’s own programmes. Wikipedia says the firm established Gensler University, its leadership development platform, in 1990, and formally set up the Gensler Research programme in 2007, now called the Gensler Research Institute. The founder also wrote a book, Art’s Principles, which arc said marked the firm’s 50th anniversary and set out what he had learned about running the business.

A surname, an office plan and a city.

An architecture practice’s identity usually begins with a name, and that name is often a list of founders’ surnames joined by commas and ampersands. Over time those lists tend to compress into initials or a single surname, and the shortened form becomes the working mark on letterheads, drawing sheets and websites. Other studios choose a single word or the name of one designer, which shifts the identity from a partnership to a studio.

Much of a practice’s visual identity lives on working documents rather than in advertising. Title blocks on drawings, the lettering on presentation boards, competition panels and the hoardings that wrap a construction site all carry the practice name, and each sets a typeface, a weight and a placement rule that repeats across projects. Monographs, exhibition catalogues and project books extend the same typography into print.

Physical spaces act as brand surfaces too. A studio’s own office, its reception and the model shop where physical models are built and photographed shape how clients and visitors meet the firm. For a design guide, the useful lesson is restraint: a short name, one typeface used with discipline, and a consistent way of presenting drawings, models and photographs.

Handovers at the top.

The founder handed over the running of the firm in stages. Bisnow reported in May 2021, citing a statement from the firm, that Art Gensler stepped down as chief executive in 2005 and as chairman in 2010. Wikipedia says that in 2005 the board named Andy Cohen, Diane Hoskins and David Gensler as executive directors and co-chief executives, extending what it calls the firm’s collaborative leadership structure.

Art Gensler died in May 2021. Bisnow reported on 10 May 2021 that the founder had died at his home in Mill Valley, California, and that the company had confirmed his death. arc reported the news on 12 May 2021, citing the San Francisco Chronicle. Bisnow said that at the time the firm was led by co-chief executives Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins, who issued a statement on behalf of the practice.

A second change at the top followed. Interior Design magazine reported on 22 August 2025, on the occasion of the firm’s 60th anniversary, that Elizabeth Brink and Jordan Goldstein were one year into their tenure as co-chief executives. It described this as only the second leadership change in the company’s history, and said Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins had moved on to serve as global co-chairs. Wikipedia dates the naming of the new co-chief executives to 2024.

The two new leaders described the shared model in the same interview. “It reflects Gensler’s belief that design is not a solo art,” Goldstein told Interior Design, adding that as leaders they saw themselves as conductors of many voices around the table. Brink said the firm modelled collaboration from projects and studios up to executive leadership. The co-leadership arrangement that began in 2005 continued under the new pair, and the firm’s name did not change through either handover.

For a design guide, Gensler shows how a founder’s surname can stay fixed as a practice adds offices, disciplines and generations of leaders, so that one plain word carries the whole firm. Compare Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an American practice named after three founders, and Bjarke Ingels Group, a practice known by its initials. For this guide we use bay brick, bay blue and harbour ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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