Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

KPF was founded in New York in 1976 by A. Eugene Kohn, William Pedersen and Sheldon Fox, and marked its 50th year in 2026. The firm works from eight offices, including New York, London, San Francisco, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul, on office towers, mixed-use districts, transit projects, campuses and residential buildings. It’s best known for supertall work, including One Vanderbilt, the 1,401-foot Manhattan tower that opened next to Grand Central Terminal in 2020. KPF is also the architect of 343 Madison Avenue, a 46-story tower now in construction on the same block. The practice employs more than 600 people and occupies over 100,000 square feet at 11 West 42nd Street facing Bryant Park.

In April 2026 KPF expanded the commercial reach of its Environmental Performance team, KPFep, so that environmental modeling, decarbonization and sustainable design can be bought as services rather than arriving bundled inside an architectural commission. Carlos Cerezo Davila, the firm’s Global Director of Sustainability, runs the group. Principal Forth Bagley described the shift as making sustainability a more substantial component of the business rather than only a design position.

The service list is specific. Early-design feasibility and benchmarking sets the targets. Decarbonization strategy uses concept simulation and site studies to build a road map. Performance-driven design puts modelers next to architects through iteration. Advanced simulation covers urban microclimate and wind analysis, full daylight and glare modeling, and life cycle assessment. The team also administers LEED and WELL certification, reviews sustainability requirements for materials during construction, and produces what KPF calls digital sustainability intelligence: as-built lifecycle models, real-time campus resilience models and microclimate digital twins at building, portfolio and urban scale.

The firm’s project pages show where that modeling lands. District-scale wind analysis shaped a thermally resilient campus for Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in a hot, humid climate. Dynamic thermal comfort analysis at the Comcentre Redevelopment in Singapore made a semi-conditioned pedestrian route through a mixed-use site workable. Interior daylight analysis balanced thermal performance against occupant comfort at the University of Michigan Center for Innovation. Digital twin work on urban microclimates is being tested in New York.

Behind the services sit firm-level commitments: carbon-neutral building design by 2030, science-based emissions reduction targets registered through the Science Based Targets initiative for KPF’s own operations, and signatures on the AIA 2030 Commitment, the RIBA 2030 Challenge and the AIA Materials Pledge. Progress is published annually, most recently in the 2025 Sustainability and Climate Action Report. Separately, KPF manages BIM coordination in house and builds its own digital tools through KPF Urban Interface, which has produced web-based analysis apps and studies including the Hawai’i Housing Lab. Project categories listed on the site run from supertall and transportation through adaptive reuse, public realm, and research and healthcare.