HOK

About HOK

HOK is a global interdisciplinary design firm employing around 1,800 people who collaborate across a network of 28 offices on three continents. The practice combines architecture, engineering, interior design and planning within a single organisation, and describes itself as working at the confluence of art and science.

The firm positions its purpose around three commitments: improving people's lives, serving its clients and healing the planet. That framing places environmental performance alongside design quality rather than treating it as a separate technical workstream.

History

HOK was established in the 1950s in St. Louis, Missouri, taking its name from founders George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum. From that single American office it expanded through successive decades into a global network, and the firm now maintains a published decade-by-decade history running from the 1950s to the present.

Disciplines and Markets

As an interdisciplinary practice HOK offers design, architecture, engineering and planning services, and works across a broad range of building types. Its best-known specialisms include aviation and transportation, sports and entertainment venues, healthcare and science facilities, workplace and commercial buildings, and civic and government projects.

The breadth matters commercially. Airports, stadiums and research laboratories are all technically demanding typologies with long procurement cycles and specialist regulatory requirements, and firms capable of delivering them tend to hold those relationships over decades.

Recent Projects

Two recent projects illustrate the firm's range. At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, HOK designed six massive prefabricated structures for the Terminal C expansion, part of the airport's nine billion dollar capital plan. The largest weighed 1,200 tons and all six were transported across active runways overnight and set into place, an approach that allowed major construction while the terminal remained operational.

In Spain, Roig Arena opened in Valencia in 2025 as a new civic anchor for the city. Designed by HOK with ERRE, the multipurpose venue accommodates up to 20,000 guests, hosts Valencia Basket Club's men's and women's teams alongside music, cultural and corporate events, and is wrapped in a facade of 8,600 ceramic fins.

Sustainability and Carbon

HOK has been carbon neutral as a business since 2022 and has committed to achieving net-zero emissions in the projects it designs by 2030. The firm reports measurable progress against that goal: in 2025 its projects on average surpassed the American Institute of Architects 2030 Commitment average, achieving a 68.2 per cent reduction in energy use intensity compared with baseline levels, with many individual projects already meeting or exceeding targets.

Critically, the commitment covers both operational and embodied carbon. HOK addresses these through research and design strategies including structural optimisation, enclosure optimisation, high-performance design and sustainable material selection. Tackling embodied carbon is the harder half of the problem, since it is fixed at the moment of construction and cannot be improved through later operational efficiency.

Why HOK Matters to the AEC Industry

HOK is one of the few firms operating at genuine global scale across multiple technically demanding sectors while publishing hard performance data against its own targets. The 68.2 per cent energy use intensity reduction figure is unusual precisely because it is specific and measured rather than aspirational, and it gives other practices a concrete benchmark. Its prefabricated megastructure work at DFW is also a useful precedent for anyone planning major construction on a live operational site, where the constraint is not design complexity but the impossibility of stopping the facility to build.