HOK

HOK began in St. Louis in 1955, when George Hellmuth recruited Gyo Obata and George Kassabaum into a practice built on the then-unusual idea that marketing, design and production should sit at the same table. Seventy years on it describes itself as a global interdisciplinary design firm, with 1,800 people in 28 offices on three continents.

The stated brief is to improve people’s lives, serve clients and heal the planet, and the firm has been carbon neutral since 2022, targeting net-zero emissions in the projects it designs by 2030. In 2025 those projects averaged a 68.2 per cent cut in energy use intensity against baseline, ahead of the AIA 2030 average. Research, structural and enclosure optimisation, and a method that treats art and science as one craft run through the work; Susan Klumpp Williams is among its Co-CEOs.