Populous acquires Fentress Architects

This week Populous announced its acquisition of Fentress Architects. The merge was something the two practices had discussed for some time. For the firms’ leadership—including Bruce Miller, global chair and CEO of Populous; and Curt Fentress, founder and principal of Fentress Architects—now felt like the right time, not to mention that the cultures and extensive portfolios of the two firms are similar in more ways than one.

Fentress will now operate under the name Fentress Studios, a Populous Company.

Populous projects dot the globe, and many need no introduction—from the Las Vegas strip’s Sphere to Olympic stadiums, the firm’s name is synonymous with sports and entertainment architecture. To deliver the large-scale projects, the firm employs more than 1,500 people and has offices in 32 locations. Fentress got its start in 1980 and today is headquartered in Denver and Washington, D.C., also operating offices in U.S. cities including Nashville, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; and Sacramento, California. A large part of its portfolio focuses on aviation projects, a sector Populous has been looking to tap into.

“We both design buildings for the public—very large, complex buildings with long span structures and many of the same programmatic elements,” Miller told AN. “And so we see a lot of parallels in our practices. We’re not a general practice. We’re a very specialized practice.”

“Our culture fit really well with Populous culture and the way they practice architecture, and the way they handle clients and feel about their clients, is the same way we feel,” added Fentress. “We think there’s a lot about the building types we do that also cross over and marry together really well.”

In recent years, Fentress has seen strong growth in its aviation work, something Fentress attributed to government-backed funding for infrastructure projects, like airports. Combined, the firms are well-equipped to rethink traditional airport design, which has always promoted the safety, comfort, and ease of passengers.

“We want to create a new way forward for aviation and transform the passenger experience to be great, not just minimizing pain points,” Miller said. “We want to make for a great passenger experience as we focused on in the sports and entertainment world.” For the firms this means tapping into Fentress’s aviation expertise and Populous’s work in experiential technology.

With the acquisition still in its infancy, the two firms continue to work out how their collaboration will operate. From this, new opportunities will emerge for designers on staff and the strengths of each firm will most definitely come into play.

“I really like one of Curt’s sayings,” Miller said. “That we’re small but mighty. And [Fentress] does some of the largest projects in the world. Now together, we’re large and we’re mighty.”