CannonDesign Acquires Ennead Architects Amid Rapid Growth Spurt

Nearly 100 years since its founding, CannonDesign has set out on an acquisition spree with the aim of rethinking what a modern-day architecture firm is.

Its latest target, in its seventh acquisition since the beginning of 2024, is New York City-based Ennead Architects. CannonDesign announced Tuesday it is combining with the 160-person practice, which also has offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai.

Ennead is CannonDesign’s largest acquisition to date. The deal adds new markets to CannonDesign’s existing 20-office portfolio and deepens the company’s dexterity when it comes to designing large civic works, CannonDesign CEO Brad Lukanic told Bisnow. 

“We have found that some firms are thinking growth for growth's sake,” Lukanic said. “We're thinking growth for differentiation.”

Prior to adding Ennead, CannonDesign — which is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan — had approximately 1,600 designers, consultants and strategists. As the architecture industry faces a growing talent shortage, pressure from artificial intelligence and an emerging private equity presence, the firm has upped its designer headcount while expanding into software engineering, experience design and branding.

Ennead is known for its work in the public realm. Among its healthcare projects are the David H. Koch Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering and the master plan for NYU Langone Health, both in Manhattan. It has completed various projects for universities, including Stanford, Cornell, Yale and Penn State. 

The firm also specializes in cultural and performing arts projects, such as the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, the Brooklyn Museum’s pavilion and plaza, and the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space. 

In Asia, Ennead’s works include the Shanghai Astronomy Museum, the ByteDance Houhai Center in Shenzhen, and CJ Blossom Park in Suwon, South Korea. The Shanghai office will provide CannonDesign a foothold in the continent.

Currently, most of CannonDesign’s offices are scattered throughout the U.S., with the exception of Toronto and Mumbai. 

Ennead’s expertise overlaps with CannonDesign, which has completed major projects for Johns Hopkins University, the California Institute of Technology and the Hollywood Burbank Airport, among others. 

As part of the deal, Ennead will continue to operate as a distinct studio. CannonDesign is an employee-owned company, and Ennead’s existing and future partners will be able to gain a stake in the larger practice.

The companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal.

“Ennead has been continuously evolving as a practice and reinventing itself over the past seven decades, and we recognized the potential for even more ambitious thinking and action,” Ennead Design Partner Richard Olcott said in a statement. “Joining CannonDesign allows us to radically grow our impact on the built environment and invest boldly alongside a firm that has long been leading the transformation of the industry. 

“We are going to build the best design firm in the world,” he added.

CannonDesign’s expansion process began a decade ago, though the investments are coming to fruition now. The goal is to stitch together a firm that moves the relationship with a client from what Lukanic calls “three to 30” — three being the number of years it takes to design and construct a single building, compared to a 30-year relationship across a suite of services.

Lukanic said CannonDesign wants to work with clients to plan for the future, even if “it may never lead to a building project.”

A year ago, CannonDesign acquired smart building consulting and technology infrastructure design firm The Clarient Group. The move was followed by the purchase of Yellow Brick Consulting, which specializes in healthcare systems, in August. At the beginning of this year, CannonDesign added education consultancy Scion Advisory Services to its portfolio.

Over the course of about two years, CannonDesign also acquired Charlotte-based Jenkins-Peer Architects, St. Louis-based Christner Architects and SRG Partnership, an architecture, interiors and planning firm with studios in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. 

The company has at least one more deal in the pipeline. 

The various sides of the firm allow “us to be really agile and pull from a family of partners at a moment's notice,” Lukanic said.

Nationwide, the country is experiencing an uptick in infrastructure projects, with utility companies alone increasing their capital spending plans by more than 27% through 2030. Massive data center projects are popping up coast to coast. And metros are looking for ways to rapidly create more housing as some estimates place the shortfall of affordable rental units at over 7 million.

Developers have a need for speed — and that strain is being transferred to architects, especially as AI becomes increasingly capable.

At the same time, the wider industry is facing consolidation efforts, both between existing practices and under the umbrella of outside players. In November, Dallas-based Corgan expanded to the Northeast with the acquisition of New York City-based Cooper Robertson. In February, middle-market private equity firm GHK Capital Partners acquired CPL, which provides architecture, engineering and consulting services.

“We are very aware of private equity and family offices and have learned a great deal about that as a model over time, and we respect it,” Lukanic said. “For us, it's different. We want to grow a 100-year business that is for our next generation of people, and by that, we can invest in ourselves.”

In addition to having various expertise under one roof, CannonDesign has tapped a team of coders to accelerate workflows. A year ago, the company created a leadership group exclusively focused on M&A. 

“There's a whole series of geographic expansions and technology and consulting expansions that, on a given basis, we are looking at and curating,” Lukanic said. “It's a pretty tough process because we want to make sure that our values align. This is not just a financial decision for another firm but really a passion to actually do something bigger together.”

CORRECTION, APRIL 21, 12:05 P.M. ET: CannonDesign is headquartered in New York City, not Buffalo, as a previous version of this article stated. This has been updated.