Putting digital images to work for Foster + Partners

• 250,000+ images migrated
• Used by 1,000+ staff globally
• 3-month implementation

Foster + Partners had struggled to manage its growing photographic library for almost a decade before adopting OpenAsset. An earlier digital asset management system had never been widely adopted across the practice, in part because it did not fit naturally into the way architects actually worked with images day to day.

As Foster + Partners expanded to project offices across 22 countries with a team of more than 1,000 people, the firm needed a single, easy-to-use photo library that any member of staff could search and rely on, wherever in the world they were based.

After reviewing the market and drawing up detailed requirements, the practice selected OpenAsset from Axomic, a system built specifically for architects, and worked with the Axomic team to plan a full migration of its existing image collection.

With more than 1,000 staff spread across project offices in 22 countries, Foster + Partners needed a digital asset management system that the whole practice would actually use, not just a subset of teams, after an earlier attempt at a DAM system failed to gain traction. The firm had accumulated a huge photographic library built up over decades of projects, and migrating more than 250,000 images without losing tagging accuracy or disrupting day-to-day work was a significant undertaking.

Foster + Partners also needed the new system to integrate with tools its staff already used, including Adobe InDesign and PowerPoint, and with its existing facts-and-figures database, so that adopting OpenAsset would streamline workflows rather than add another disconnected tool for architects and the communications team to learn.

Before OpenAsset, Foster + Partners relied on an earlier digital asset management system that had never been fully adopted across the practice, alongside basic project folders for storing photographs. Images were scattered across local drives and shared folders, making them difficult to search, tag consistently, or reuse across the firm's growing number of international offices.

Staff outside the immediate project team often could not find or access relevant photography at all, which limited how effectively the practice could reuse its own image library for presentations, marketing, and business development. With offices expanding rapidly across 22 countries, this fragmented, folder-based approach could not keep pace with the volume of images being produced or the need for staff anywhere in the world to access them quickly.

Adopting OpenAsset gave Foster + Partners a single, searchable architectural photo library that all 1,000+ staff can access from any of its offices across 22 countries, replacing a fragmented system that much of the practice had never fully adopted. Axomic migrated more than 250,000 images from the firm's legacy system within roughly three months, with automated keyword tagging by project attributes such as sector, location, and building type making the collection far easier to search.

Direct integration with Adobe InDesign and PowerPoint lets architects and the communications team drag images straight into presentations and marketing materials, while shared albums and permission-based access let teams collaborate on image selection. Foster + Partners has said senior partners have embraced the system and that it gets far more value out of its image collection as a result.