“We’re hiring and busy as hell.” ”We’ve won more work in the past year than we ever have in the history of our practice.” This is what it looks like at the top of the WA100, in the bullish words of the heads of Gensler and HDR, two of the biggest architects on the planet.

Listening to them, you would be forgiven for thinking that there had never been a global pandemic, nor that entire cities all over the world had been rendered ghost towns for months at a time. Cast your mind back to the bewildering spring of 2020 and it’s a miracle that things are so rosy.

The numbers in this year’s Top 100 have held remarkably firm compared with last year – and also with the edition before, which predates the pandemic. Of course there have been winners and losers, but overall the trend is stability through a period of exceptional rockiness. And the predictions for the year ahead are for growth, not stagnation.

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