What led to Ai being purchased by Perkins + Will?
We had a great ride. But the industry clearly was consolidating and we had gotten to the point that we were competing with firms that had 1,000 people and firms that had 15 people. We were too big to be small and too small to be big. So we decided that we were going to go for being bigger and that meant being acquired. We had three firms trying to acquire us so we compared cultures and financial deals, among other factors. When we closed the deal people asked me if I was happy or sad. I told them that for all the incredibly stupid things I’ve done in my life, doing this deal was probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Perkins + Will puts a lot of emphasis on sustainability. Why? I’m an engineer by training and frankly we were doing cutting edge sustainable design long before it became fashionable. A lot of what we call sustainable issues today were considered just good common sense engineering practice 25 years ago. The biggest paradigm shift that impacted the design industry was t
