Most architecture firm profiles just list projects without explaining why any of it matters. ZGF Architects is worth a closer look precisely because its portfolio spans such a wide range airports, hospitals, corporate campuses. Museums while somehow dodging the kind of signature style that makes a firm instantly recognizable. But boring to hire for varied work. Here’s what actually defines ZGF’s approach, a handful of its most significant recent projects. And the firm’s design philosophy explained in terms you can actually evaluate. Not the marketing language repeated across every architecture website out there.
Researching the firm for a project. A job, or just curious what keeps an 80-year-old practice landing major public infrastructure work? This should give you the real picture.
Who Is ZGF Architects, and How Did It Get Here?
Founded in Portland, Oregon in 1942, originally under a different name. That’s the starting point. And the firm’s grown since into one of the larger architecture practices based in the Pacific Northwest. It formally became Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership after architects Robert Frasca, Norm Zimmer. And Brooks Gunsul took over leadership, eventually rebranding to the ZGF name it carries now.
Seven offices today, spread across the US and Canada. Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York, Denver, Vancouver. More than 700 staff, some sources pushing that number above 750 depending on when exactly the count got taken. That multi-office structure actually matters for how the firm works day to day. Rather than centralizing every design decision in one headquarters, ZGF spreads genuine design leadership across its offices. Shows up clearly in how differently its healthcare work in San Diego reads compared to its airport work back in Portland.
How long has ZGF Architects actually been in business, at this point? Since 1942. More than 80 years as of 2026. That kind of longevity in architecture is genuinely uncommon. And it reflects the firm’s knack for landing major institutional and public infrastructure commissions across multiple design generations. Rather than fading out once its founders retired like plenty of firms do.
The PDX Terminal Expansion: ZGF’s Highest-Profile Recent Project
Researching ZGF right now? Its work on Portland International Airport is probably the most current, highest-visibility project worth understanding. It’s been unfolding in phases over several years, and it just hit a major milestone.
ZGF designed the main terminal expansion for the Port of Portland. And the project’s second and final phase opened in June 2026 completing what’s described as roughly a one-million-square-foot project. Reportedly the largest public infrastructure project in Oregon’s history. What’s genuinely notable here, beyond sheer scale. Is that ZGF built much of the roof structure using mass timber. Prefabricated off-site specifically so the airport could keep operating throughout construction without shutting anything down. Serious logistical achievement stacked on top of a design one building a massive new roof over an active. Fully operational airport terminal without disrupting passenger flow the whole time.
What actually makes the PDX terminal expansion significant, beyond just being big? Beyond its scale as roughly a one-million-square-foot project, it’s notable for extensive prefabricated mass-timber construction. Engineered specifically to keep the airport fully operational throughout the entire build. ZGF also worked earlier phases of the project Concourse B and Concourse E. Completed in 2021 and 2020 respectively as part of the broader multi-year terminal modernization effort.
A Portfolio That Deliberately Avoids One Signature Look
Unlike firms that get associated with one recognizable aesthetic, ZGF’s own stated philosophy explicitly rejects that approach. And the actual project portfolio backs it up, rather than just asserting it as marketing copy.
Healthcare and research work includes Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and the conversion of a historic Ford Motor Company factory into a biomedical research laboratory adaptive reuse that required balancing modern lab infrastructure against a genuinely historic industrial building. Corporate and tech portfolio includes Amazon’s HQ2 Metropolitan Park campus, alongside landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, plus an executive briefing center for genomics company Illumina. Academic and cultural side: university buildings at Stanford and the University of Oregon, cultural projects like the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
Does ZGF Architects even have a signature style, or does it genuinely avoid one? No ZGF explicitly describes its design approach as shaped by climate, context, and human experience rather than a repeatable visual signature. Shows up practically in how differently the firm’s healthcare buildings read compared to its airport, corporate, and cultural work, since each project responds to a genuinely different site and program instead of reflecting one consistent look across everything.
Sustainability as a Core Practice, Not a Marketing Layer
Environmental design shows up across nearly every category of ZGF’s work. Worth understanding as a genuine technical practice, not just a values statement parked on the firm’s website somewhere.
The PAE Living Building project, developed with engineering firm PAE, incorporates features like compostable toilets and an on-site photovoltaic array, part of pursuing one of the most rigorous sustainable building certifications available anywhere. Stanford’s Central Energy Facility, another ZGF project, was designed specifically to support the university’s broader push toward cutting its campus-wide carbon footprint through more efficient centralized energy infrastructure. This pattern sustainability baked into the actual engineering and material choices, not applied afterward as a certification checkbox runs consistently through the firm’s institutional and corporate work alike.
How does ZGF Architects actually approach sustainable design, mechanically speaking? Integrates it directly into a project’s engineering and material choices from early design stages, rather than treating it as an add-on feature bolted on later. The PAE Living Building and Stanford’s Central Energy Facility demonstrate this through specific technical choices compostable toilet systems, on-site solar generation, centralized energy infrastructure rather than general statements about environmental values alone.
Recognition From the Profession Itself
Beyond individual project awards, ZGF has received recognition for the firm as a whole. Genuinely different, and harder-to-earn distinction than winning awards for individual buildings one at a time.
The American Institute of Architects awarded ZGF its Architecture Firm Award, a national honor recognizing what the AIA specifically credits as the firm’s high standards, humanistic concerns, and consistent ability to capture the character of a place alongside the needs of the people using it. Beyond that firm-wide recognition, ZGF’s individual projects have collectively earned several hundred design awards over the firm’s history, spanning categories from sustainable design to historic preservation to public infrastructure. The firm’s also had a number of projects featured on ArchDaily, a widely-read architecture publication that tends to spotlight work architects themselves consider genuinely significant, not just well-marketed.
Has ZGF Architects actually won the AIA Architecture Firm Award, or is that overstated? Yes recognized specifically for the consistency and quality of the firm’s overall body of work, rather than any single standout project. This kind of firm-wide recognition is considered harder to earn than individual project awards, since it demands sustained excellence across an entire practice over years, not just one particularly strong building somewhere in the portfolio.
Conclusion
ZGF Architects has built an 80-plus-year practice on a genuinely wide-ranging portfolio airports, hospitals, corporate campuses, universities, museums held together by a stated design philosophy that prioritizes climate, context, and human experience over any single recognizable style. Its recent work on the Portland International Airport terminal expansion, alongside deep sustainability integration in projects like the PAE Living Building, shows a firm still pushing technically ambitious work well into its ninth decade. Not coasting on past reputation. For anyone researching the firm, its range and its AIA Architecture Firm Award recognition together explain why it keeps landing major institutional commissions across so many different building types.
FAQs
ZGF Architects was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1942, making it more than 80 years old as of 2026. The firm operated under different names before becoming Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership and eventually ZGF Architects.
ZGF operates from seven offices across the United States and Canada, including Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York, Denver, and Vancouver. Portland remains the firm’s headquarters and its largest office.
ZGF is known for a deliberately diverse portfolio spanning airports, healthcare and research facilities, corporate campuses, universities, and cultural institutions, most notably its work on the Portland International Airport terminal expansion. The firm is also widely recognized for integrating sustainable design directly into its engineering and material choices rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Yes ZGF received the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Firm Award, a national honor recognizing the overall quality and consistency of a firm’s body of work. The firm’s individual projects have also collectively earned several hundred design awards throughout its history.
