FORMWORKSTUDIO Competitors

Foster + Partners is a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, all rooted in sustainability and founded by Norman Foster in 1967. Since then, he and the team around him have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation. With offices across the globe, we work as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is a global practice of architects, designers, engineers, and planners, responsible for some of the world’s most technically and environmentally advanced buildings and significant public spaces. The firm’s approach is highly collaborative, and its interdisciplinary team is engaged in a wide range of international projects, with creative studios based across the globe. In 2026, SOM was named one of the Most Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company and received the Equality 100 Award: Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. The firm’s portfolio includes numerous innovative landmark towers, including the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, One World Trade Center in New York, and Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, as well as large-scale urban planning initiatives that integrate density, mobility, and sustainability—including the award-winning Sultan Haitham City in Muscat, Oman, and the recently unveiled masterplan for Bradfield City, Australia’s first new city in more than a century.

We work at all scales and in all sectors. We create transformative cultural, corporate, residential and other spaces that work in synchronicity with their surroundings. Zaha Hadid, founding partner of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and is internationally known for her built, theoretical and academic work. Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on over thirty years of revolutionary experimentation and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design. Working with senior office partner Patrik Schumacher, Hadid’s interest is in the rigorous interface between architecture, landscape, and geology as the practice integrates natural topography and human-made systems that lead to experimentation with cutting-edge technologies. Such a process often results in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.