Wrapping up 2021, KPF celebrates the firm’s accomplishments, highlighting project milestones, award wins, and community events that took place around the globe.
Continuing and improving on the remote collaboration and flexible work models adopted in 2020, KPF is grateful to close out another successful year thanks to our enthusiastic and dedicated staff, associates, and clients.
Throughout 2021, KPF celebrated project milestones both virtually and safely in person, including the topping out of Jakarta’s first supertall pair at Thamrin Nine, with Autograph Tower topping out at the beginning of the year and Luminary Tower at the end. In Seoul, construction completed on Bundang Doosan Tower, an iconic office building providing a new gateway to the city. Heron, a multi-unit residential project, also was realized in 2021, anchoring the world’s first WELL-certified neighborhood, Water Street Tampa. Looking ahead, KPF unveiled the design for Burrard Exchange, a hybrid mass timber office building in Vancouver. Additional milestones include sustainability certifications, groundbreakings, and city approvals.
KPF’s growing project portfolio was accompanied by an expanding awards case, which includes new honors from SCUP for the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law, a MIPIM Award for The Bermondsey Project, and multiple honors from the CTBUH, American MasterPrize, and Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards. The Bedford-Stuyvesant community engagement project Neighborhoods Now received an Award of Citation from AIA New York State and a MASterworks Award from the Municipal Arts Society.
In order to accommodate the firm’s growing portfolio, our total employees increased to over 740 internationally, including the addition of Kavitha Mathew as KPF’s new Global Diversity Officer.
Many events continued to take place virtually, allowing a wider international audience to tune in, including KPF’s monthlong Pride celebration, a webinar for International Women’s Day with Libby Sellers, and a lecture and Q&A with April De Simone hosted by KPF Public. The second-annual Extra Mile Challenge inspired KPF employees to get active and share their accomplishments for charity, raising over $25,000 in support of global causes. KPF’s headquarters in New York took the opportunity to improve internal safety systems, allowing us to become the first architecture firm in the US to earn a WELL Health-Safety Rating seal.
As we close out another year impacted by the pandemic, KPF remains grateful to the countless healthcare professionals, essential workers, and all those who do their part to keep us safe. The firm also extends thanks to all of its staff for their optimism, resilience, and meaningful contributions to the community and success of KPF.
We embrace 2022 with open arms, as more exciting milestones exist on the horizon.