Perkins Eastman and Kliment Halsband Architects are pleased to announce their merger, which will combine the formidable talents, experience, and skills of both legacy firms. With Perkins Eastman celebrating its 40th anniversary and Kliment Halsband celebrating its 50th, this merger promises to create powerful synergies.
Perkins Eastman, the seventh largest architecture and design firm in the world with more than 1,100 employees, has worked on projects on five continents in 60 countries. Its portfolio reflects expertise in multiple practice areas with strengths in healthcare, senior living, large-scale mixed-use, K-12, higher education, hospitality, and workplace design as well as planning, urban design, and strategic consulting. Kliment Halsband Architects is known for designing award-winning new buildings, renovations, and adaptive reuse projects for educational, cultural, and civic institutions. The firm’s reputation for a sensitive, tailored approach for mission-focused clients is long established.
The merger provides a framework for combining Perkins Eastman’s expansive scale, deep reserve of design, and diverse portfolio with Kliment Halsband Architects’ renowned engagement in institutional design, its reputation for pragmatic innovation, and its leadership position within the industry. Both firms have highly collaborative working styles, prioritize client service, and are committed to educating and inspiring the next generation of professionals.
“Both firms believe in the power of design to improve people’s lives, and we’re looking forward to providing that benefit to a wider range of institutions,” says Mary-Jean Eastman, FAIA, co-founder and vice chair of Perkins Eastman.
Frances Halsband, FAIA, a founding partner of Kliment Halsband, adds, “We see things the same way, but we work in different ways to bring something new to the table. When we work together, we accomplish more than when we work individually.” Kliment Halsband will be known as “Kliment Halsband Architects—A Perkins Eastman Studio,” joining Perkins Eastman’s leaders in the K-12 and Colleges and Universities practices. The firms’ New York studios are co-located at 115 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.
ABOUT PERKINS EASTMAN
Perkins Eastman is a global design firm founded on the belief that design can have a direct and positive impact on people’s lives. The firm’s award-winning practice draws on its 1,100+ professionals networked across 24 studios worldwide. By keeping the user’s needs foremost in the design process, the firm enhances the human experience across the spectrum of the built environment. For more information, visit www.perkinseastman.com.
ABOUT KLIMENT HALSBAND ARCHITECTS—A PERKINS EASTMAN STUDIO
Kliment Halsband Architects, founded by Robert M. Kliment and Frances Halsband in New York City in 1972, is a diverse group of architects committed to the idea that good architecture imparts dignity to organizational mission and individual endeavor. The firm transforms buildings and sites with a measured approach that engages the past and welcomes the future. KHA advocates for sustainability and accessibility for all, but values most a project’s enduring usefulness: beauty, intelligibility to the people who use it, and the ability to adapt to change. The firm has received the AIA Firm Award, the AIA New York City Medal of Honor, and more than 150 awards for design excellence. For more information, visit www.kliment-halsband.com.
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
County building aims for the sun, shade
The 187,032-sf East County Hall of Justice in Dublin, Calif., will be oriented to take advantage of daylighting, with exterior sunshades preventing unwanted heat gain and glare. The building is targeting LEED Silver. Strong horizontal massing helps both buildings better match their low-rise and residential neighbors.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
The Watch Factory, Waltham, Mass.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards — Gold Award. When the Boston Watch Company opened its factory in 1854 on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Mass., the area was far enough away from the dust, dirt, and grime of Boston to safely assemble delicate watch parts.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Cleveland, Ohio
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. The Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was dedicated on the Fourth of July, 1894, to honor the memory of the more than 9,000 Cuyahoga County veterans of the Civil War.
