KPF

About KPF

KPF, formally Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, is a global architecture practice founded in New York on 4 July 1976 by A. Eugene Kohn, William Pedersen and Sheldon Fox. Now employing more than 600 people, the firm operates from its head office at 11 West 42nd Street in Manhattan alongside studios in London, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul, San Francisco, Singapore and Berlin.

The practice states its mission plainly: to transform cities through context, craft and performance. Those three words are not decorative. They function as the firm's operating framework, and it organises its published work and thinking around them.

The Three Principles

Context. KPF holds that its designs should be informed by their environments and should improve them. For a firm whose portfolio is dominated by very large buildings in dense cities, this is the discipline that keeps a tower from being an object dropped into a street.

Craft. The practice describes its work as carefully crafted, inventive and durable, with attention to material and detail at close range. Its writing on the subject treats detailing as a design act rather than a technical afterthought.

Performance. Technical, economic, environmental and social performance underpin design decisions. In commercial development, where a building must satisfy an investor's return model as well as a planning authority, this framing reflects the reality of how large projects are actually justified.

Sectors

• Supertall – the specialism KPF is best known for internationally.
• Office and headquarters – corporate workplace at every scale.
• Mixed-use – large urban developments combining several uses.
• Transportation – airports and transit-related architecture.
• Residential and hospitality – housing and hotels.
• Civic, cultural and education – public and institutional buildings.
• Research and healthcare – laboratory and clinical facilities.
• Adaptive reuse – repurposing existing building stock.
• Planning, urban design and public realm – city-scale strategy and the spaces between buildings.
• Interiors, retail, applied technology and environmental modelling – supporting specialisms carried in house.

Notable Projects

KPF's supertall portfolio includes the 115-storey Ping An Financial Centre in Shenzhen and One Vanderbilt in Midtown Manhattan, which rises beside Grand Central Terminal and integrates directly with the transit concourse below. Zayed International Airport represents the firm's transportation work at national infrastructure scale.

Smaller-scale work demonstrates the craft principle: the lobby at 712 Fifth Avenue, the brick facade of 64 University Place, and 500 West 21st Street. Westlake 66 has been recognised by the Urban Land Institute for its use of innovative low-carbon materials.

Research and Environmental Modelling

KPF maintains dedicated applied technology and environmental modelling capabilities, and publishes research on urban questions including what it calls central social districts, examining how real estate must adapt as the function of city centres shifts away from pure office monoculture.

Why KPF Matters to the AEC Industry

KPF is among a very small group of practices with genuine supertall expertise, a field where structural engineering, wind performance, vertical transportation and facade systems dominate the design problem and where very few firms have sufficient completed precedent. Its influence on skylines from New York to London to Shenzhen is substantial. For developers and engineers, the firm is also a useful case study in how technical, economic, environmental and social performance can be held together as design criteria rather than treated as competing constraints.