FFKR Architects

FFKR Architects works out of the Bogue Building on Pacific Avenue in Salt Lake City, with further studios in Tempe, Boise and St. George. The firm counts 186 employees on its website, a group that includes architects, interior designers and landscape architects. Its studios cover K-12 and higher education, healthcare, hospitality, civic, commercial and religious buildings. FFKR is the architect on the Salt Lake Temple Renovation, where it says it’s leading the design effort for the remodel and seismic upgrade of the 19th-century temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ENR reported that FFKR specialists also worked on the interior restoration. The firm doesn’t state a founding year on the pages we read.

FFKR organises itself into 13 studios rather than departments, and the list is worth reading because it shows where the firm’s depth actually sits: civic, commercial, commercial interiors, healthcare, higher education, hospitality, hospitality interior design, PreK-12 education, living environments, planning and landscape, religious, science and technology, and sports and entertainment.

Two of those are doubled – commercial and hospitality each have a separate interiors studio. That structure tells you interiors is a discipline here rather than a finishing step, which matters on a hotel or a restaurant fit-out where the interior is most of what a guest experiences.

Five service lines back the studios: architecture, interior design, planning and landscape architecture, a 3D studio, and graphic design and marketing. The last two are unusual to find in-house. A firm with its own visualisation and graphics capability can produce the renderings for a public hearing and the wayfinding and signage package for the finished building without going outside, which keeps a consistent hand on both.

Four offices, each with a published address: 730 Pacific Avenue in Salt Lake City, 58 S River Drive, Suite 380 in Tempe, 310 North 5th Street in Boise, and 720 S River Road, Suite D2100B in St. George. The St. George presence is the one that signals intent – southern Utah has grown fast and is far enough from Salt Lake City to need people on the ground.

The firm has been named Firm of the Year by both AIA Utah and the AIA Western Mountain Region, which is peer recognition across a multi-state region rather than a single state.

One caveat for anyone comparing numbers: the site currently states over 170 staff, covering architects, interior designers and landscape architects. An earlier figure of 186 appears elsewhere. Treat the firm as mid-sized – large enough for a hospital or a campus, small enough that a principal stays on the job – and confirm the current count directly if it matters to a selection.

The Salt Lake City office is on (801) 521-6186.