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By Leslie Clark Lewis, Class of 2009

We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the death of architect Art Gensler, who passed away on May 10, 2021 at age 86. Gensler is known today as the man behind the world’s largest architectural firm (Gensler), with offices in 50 cities worldwide and some 5,000 employees. But when he, his wife, and a business associate started M. Arthur Gensler & Associates in 1965, it was just the three of them in a San Francisco office with beads for an office door.

The firm’s first big project was designing the interiors for a 1967 SOM project in San Francisco, the Alcoa Building. “It seemed that most of the big architectural firms needed somebody to put the tenants in there,” Gensler said in a 2014 interview. The Gensler firm stepped right in to fill the need.

Corporate interiors were the company’s primary focus for a number of years and his firm came to dominate the field. As the company grew, it expanded to touch every aspect of architecture and the built environment, with scores of completed projects worldwide. But all the while, Gensler himself kept a low profile and adhered to a client-first approach. According to a company spokesperson, “He always said there are no ‘Art Gensler’ buildings – only projects for clients and communities that entire teams created.” No starchitect, he.

After Gensler stepped down as Gensler CEO in 2005 and as board chair in 2010, he still came to the office most days. He remained active with philanthropic activities, only recently resigning as chair of the board of trustees for California College of the Arts. In addition, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (his alma matter) all benefitted from his generous contributions.

A good way to at least partly sum up his contributions comes from his colleague, current Gensler Co-CEO Diane Hoskins: “His vision for our firm was that, together, designers and clients can solve the world’s biggest challenges. This has never been more important than it is right now. His legacy as a person was in the way he mentored almost everyone he met. An instant friend with an open mind and a master connector of people, the built environment, and the human experience.”