Architectural firm

Henry Hobson Richardson may have been one of the first to have an established office and McKim, Mead, and White may have been among the first to resemble the large, modern architectural firm.

[1] The oldest active architecture firms in the United States are SmithGroup of Detroit, MI and Luckett and Farley of Louisville, KY, having both been founded in 1853.

In the United Kingdom, Brierley Groom is the oldest continuing practice, having been founded in 1750 at York, England.

Small firms with fewer than five people usually have no formal organizational structure, depending on the personal relationships of the principals and employees to organize the work.

Medium-sized firms with 5 to 50 employees are often organized departmentally in departments such as design, production, business development, and construction administration.

In addition to using lower-cost, high-skill professionals in Asian countries, it also enables some firms to work, in effect, two or three shifts due to time differences.

The recent market situation has led to an acceleration in this trend and a growing number of architecture firms in India and China are now outsourcing work to architects in the west.

[citation needed] The long-term and widespread effects of these practices on architectural firms (in all parts of the world) remain to be seen.