For Miracle Mile-based CO Architects, who specialize in designing and renovating healthcare and educational facilities, the pandemic has brought an unexpected boon, with a period of rapid job and staff growth.

Since the pandemic began, CO (pronounced “ko”) Architects has grown its staff by a third to 160 employees, prompting a move to a larger 27,000-square-foot headquarters late last year.

“After the initial short lockdown, work started flowing and didn’t stop,” said Jenna Knudsen, the company’s new managing principal. “Healthcare and life sciences research never slowed down, and the education market was in demand,” she said.

In the past 15 months, CO Architects has begun design work on two mega projects in the healthcare market. The $1.7 billion, five-year West Carson Harbor UCLA Medical Center Exchange Project and the $1.3 billion hospital and medical complex. North end of UC Irvine campus.

The increase in staff is most noticeable at CO Architects’ only satellite office in San Diego. It opened five years ago with a small staff. Knudsen said the office now has more than a dozen employees and is still hiring.

CO Architects has a long-standing relationship with the University of California, San Diego, and has worked on over a dozen projects over the years. The company is currently in the design stages of a 250,000-square-foot outpatient center on the University’s Hillcrest Medical Campus and wants other work on its $3 billion redevelopment plan across its 10-acre Medical Campus. increase.

Until at least last year, all these new projects and CO Architects additional staff did not translate into additional revenue, down from about $66 million in 2020 to $63 million last year.

Despite this, CO Architects ranked second among Los Angeles County architectural firms in the Business Journal’s latest list, behind San Francisco-based Gensler.
The company was founded in 1986 as the Los Angeles office of San Francisco-based Anshen+Allen Architects and has grown steadily since being sold to Edmonton, Alberta-based Stantec in 2010.

Since its inception, the company, wholly owned by employee shareholders, has focused on healthcare and educational facilities, along with other civic projects.
“These have always been our core markets, and Los Angeles is our core geographic focus,” Knudsen said. CO Architects isn’t the only company focused on these markets.

“Healthcare projects have been a hot market for a long time,” said William Richards, a Washington, DC-based freelancer who covers the business and culture of architecture and has worked as a communications consultant for the American Institute of Architects. rice field. “In fact, there are a lot of architecture firms founded just for this market.”

hot sector

Richards said higher education has also become an area that has received more and more attention in recent years.
“Many universities are collecting donations and are ready to start campus improvement projects,” he said.

The pandemic has also forced healthcare and other facilities to readjust their heating/ventilation/air conditioning systems to improve air circulation and reduce the risk of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus indoors. , provided many jobs for construction companies.

In California, there is another factor driving both markets, especially healthcare. It’s a state seismic retrofitting requirement. California faces a 2030 deadline to ensure hospitals and other acute care facilities can operate after a major earthquake.

The Harbor UCLA project, which CO Architect recently joined the team for, is primarily a building replacement caused by these seismic upgrade rules.

UCLA and Paul Williams

CO Architects has also undertaken several seismic retrofit and modernization projects on the UCLA campus. The hardest was the LA Cretts Botany Building and the Pritzker Hall Psychology Tower, two of his buildings designed by the famous mid-20th century black architect Paul Williams.

“They were very difficult. It was a Paul Williams building, so we spent a lot of time figuring out how to bring the building up to modern standards while still respecting the original design,” said Knudsen. rice field. “To mitigate the shock caused by the earthquake,” she added.

Peter Hendrickson, associate vice president of design and construction at UCLA, worked with CO Architects on both projects.

“What stood out to me was that CO Architects was able to work on these two highly complex seismic projects while both buildings were fully occupied,” Hendrickson said. increase.

“The CO Architects did something very unusual, involving students and faculty using two buildings in the design and construction process,” he continued. “They really understood what the program was about, going far beyond the input from the end users of the building. And just as importantly, they incorporated the input of students and faculty into the design. .”

Shortly after major work on the La Kretz Botany building was completed last year, CO Architects spearheaded one additional and unexpected project.
“In the botany building, I came across a mural painting by Paul Williams that did not enter the original building,” Knudsen said. The drawing is in black and white with a plant-filled glass mosaic along the bottom. “Based on that original concept, we created a mural on the building,” she added. It involved several of the firm’s architects to study Williams’ other works to gain insight into his color preferences.

Will it continue to grow?

Like many architecture and design firms in recent months, CO Architects has a long lead time between design submission and construction beginning. Usually most of this lead time is spent on procuring construction materials. But since early last year, soaring material costs, supply chain issues, and other challenges have pushed lead times to six months or more for many projects.

Knudsen added that CO Architects is adjusting the materials required for the design accordingly. “Often the ingredients we initially choose may not be the same as they were three years ago,” she said.
The company has also modified its design to accommodate the changing nature of the workplace brought about by the pandemic.

“We now have to adjust our designs to accommodate new workplaces where many people work remotely most of the time and are in the office occasionally,” she said. applications, meeting rooms of different sizes, working with engineers to improve ventilation, etc.”

When it comes to growth, the company isn’t looking for geographic expansion. “We are looking to expand our services to clients within our core markets such as interior design, medical space planners and environmental graphic technology,” she said.

Geographically, CO Architects remains focused on Los Angeles as a base market and has no plans to open new offices outside of San Diego in the near future.

If project opportunities arise elsewhere in the country, Knudsen said the company is working through partnerships with local construction firms in the project area.
“In some cases, these companies tend to take the permits and we are the design architects, especially for projects in our core practice areas,” she said.

Acquisitions are also not on the menu for the foreseeable future, she added. “We are more focused on organic growth.”
According to writer and industry communications consultant Richards, it’s a good strategy at this point in the architectural field.

“If you look at the areas CO architects focus on, they are in the key growth areas of healthcare, education and technology.”