Patrick Schumacher's decision to rebrand Zaha Hadid Architects as ZHA marks the latest chapter in a transformation taking place across the architecture industry. For decades, the profession was defined by the rise of the "starchitect": founder-led practices built around a singular vision, personality, and name. Today, many of those firms are facing a fundamental question: what happens when the founder is no longer there?
In this article, we explore how succession planning, industry consolidation, and increasing private equity investment are reshaping architecture firms and redefining what long-term success looks like in the sector.
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Over the past five years, the industry has sadly lost influential figures, including Helmut Jahn, Rafael Viñoly, Robert A.M. Stern, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Richard Rogers, and Frank Gehry, while other major firms are actively navigating succession and leadership transitions. As a result, architecture practices around the world are increasingly being forced to consider how they preserve culture, develop future leaders, and create continuity beyond their founders.
The ZHA rebrand is a particularly significant example because it highlights that succession is more than just a cultural or leadership challenge. Following a UK Court of Appeal ruling, the practice was able to end a trademark licensing agreement with the Zaha Hadid Foundation that reportedly cost the firm more than £21 million in royalties between 2018 and 2024. The move demonstrates how founder legacy, ownership structures, and long-term business sustainability are becoming increasingly interconnected.
The industry is therefore moving away from a model where a firm’s success is tied to one individual. For many years, the founder’s name, reputation, and design philosophy were often the firm’s greatest asset. But as firms expand and compete for increasingly complex projects, there is a growing need to build organizations that can sustain growth, attract investment, and maintain consistency beyond any single leadership figure.
Succession planning is now a strategic priority, with firms investing more heavily in leadership development and ownership structures designed to support long-term continuity while preserving the values that made them successful in the first place.
Practices including ZHA are repositioning themselves as long-lasting institutions, aiming to follow in the footsteps of firms such as Perkins&Will and Gensler. As Schumacher explained when announcing the rebrand, "We feel it's a very natural brand evolution to move to a more collective identity. We are a collective of many talents, with a shared purpose, a shared set of values."
The distinction is important because it highlights the difference between a founder-led practice and an institutional business model. While ZHA has grown into one of the world's most recognizable architecture firms with approximately 500 employees globally, firms such as Gensler employ more than 6,000 people across dozens of offices worldwide.
This shift is not about abandoning design leadership but about creating organizations whose success is not dependent on a single individual. For architecture firms considering their own future, the challenge is creating a business capable of sustaining growth and attracting talent regardless of leadership transitions.
Alongside succession planning, consolidation and acquisition are reshaping the market at an unprecedented pace. The architecture and engineering sector surpassed 500 completed mergers and acquisitions for the first time in history during 2025. Transaction activity has now exceeded 450 deals annually for 5 consecutive years, while high-quality firms entering the market typically attract between 20 and 30 credible buyers.
In this environment, the acquisitions of Page by Stantec and Ennead by CannonDesign signal entirely new chapters for two highly respected practices, following in the footsteps of Ramboll's acquisition of Henning Larsen several years ago.
The rationale behind these deals is greater than just pure growth. Firms are seeking integrated services, deeper technical expertise, wider geographic reach, stronger balance sheets, and greater access to capital. Clients are also increasingly looking for partners capable of delivering fully integrated, multidisciplinary solutions across large and complex projects, reducing the need to manage multiple specialist providers.
As consolidation accelerates, it is becoming increasingly clear that architecture firms are not simply looking for larger platforms. Many of the industry’s biggest multidisciplinary businesses are actively targeting respected design-led practices as they look to strengthen their architectural credentials and broaden their service offerings.
The acquisition of Page helped establish Stantec as the second-largest architecture firm in the United States, marking a clear move to enhance its design capability alongside its existing engineering and infrastructure strengths. Rather than being driven by scale alone, the deal reflects a broader effort to secure recognized design expertise within a larger integrated business.
A similar approach can be seen in CannonDesign’s acquisition of Ennead, which brought a highly regarded 160-person design studio into a wider organization of more than 1,750 professionals. The move reflects a growing emphasis on combining strong design reputation with the delivery capacity of a multidisciplinary platform.
Ramboll’s acquisition of Henning Larsen follows the same pattern. Historically, many engineering-led organizations have not been seen as leaders in architectural design. Acquiring established design practices allows them to strengthen that position while expanding the scope of services they can offer to clients.
As this trend continues, a key question remains over whether these firms will retain the distinct design identities that made them successful, or whether they will gradually evolve into more integrated but less individually defined multidisciplinary practices.
Alongside traditional consolidation, private equity investment in architecture is accelerating rapidly. While mergers between architecture and engineering firms are not new, the growing presence of financial investors represents a shift in how some businesses are approaching growth, ownership, and long-term succession.
Private equity firms typically operate through a platform-building model. Rather than acquiring a single business and leaving it unchanged, investors often acquire an initial architecture or engineering practice and then use it as a foundation for further acquisitions. This approach enables rapid expansion across geography, technical capability, and market share through a structured sequence of deals.
This trend has been reflected in a growing volume of activity across the sector, with more than 80 A&E firms completing multiple acquisitions in 2025. While not all of this activity is driven by private equity, institutional capital has become an increasingly influential force in shaping deal structures and growth strategies.
Examples include Godspeed Capital’s partnership with Stengel Hill Architecture, which created a platform designed to support further acquisitions, and Bernhard Capital Partners’ investment in Grace Hebert Curtis Architecture, which expanded through a series of acquisitions to form Grace Design Studios.
For some founder-led firms, private equity offers an alternative route to traditional succession planning, providing access to capital, operational scale, and a defined exit pathway where internal leadership transitions are not in place. It also represents a shift away from the traditional partnership model that has long defined the architecture profession. In some cases, these moves are driven by strategic ambition, while in others they reflect succession pressure or the need for capital and stability.
These industry changes are reshaping how both leadership talent and architects evaluate career opportunities. While leadership continuity, ownership structures, and long-term stability are becoming increasingly important considerations, architecture remains different from many other industries in how career decisions are made. For many professionals, a firm’s design philosophy, creative culture, and approach to architecture remain just as influential as salary or progression.
As consolidation continues and more firms come together through mergers and acquisitions, the industry is increasingly debating whether integration into larger multidisciplinary organizations will strengthen these practices through greater investment and capability, or whether it risks diluting the design cultures that originally defined them. This tension between commercial scale and creative identity is becoming an increasingly important factor in both hiring decisions and long-term career planning.
The traditional model of architecture centered around one iconic designer is undoubtedly evolving. Succession planning, consolidation, and private equity investment are becoming defining themes across the industry, but exactly how these changes shape the profession remains to be seen.
For some firms, integration into larger platforms will unlock new opportunities for growth and investment, while for others independence and a defined design culture will remain their strongest competitive advantage.
What is clear is that leadership teams are increasingly being asked to balance commercial strategy with the creative identity that has long defined architecture’s most respected practices.
As architecture firms navigate succession planning, ownership transitions, mergers, and acquisitions, leadership talent has never been more crucial. CSG Talent partners with architecture firms across North America to identify the executive leaders and specialist professionals needed to support sustainable growth, strengthen succession plans, and build businesses capable of thriving for generations to come.
Contact our architecture recruitment experts to secure key leadership talent.
