How Architects make Money? Highest Earning Architects net worth breakdown

who are the top earning architects in the world and what are their sources of income well in this video i'm gonna break down the top seven earning architects from 10 million to 240 million dollars of net income and i'm gonna break down their sources of income so if you're interested let's get started [Music] i thought this would be an interesting video to look at the top earning architect and do a breakdown of what they're doing in terms of their sources of income and how they're achieving those top earnings and also looking at their offices how

many offices do they have the sizes of their offices which some of them i couldn't get this information it was a little harder to find but i did capture the majority in this video and i thought that this was a great comparison where you can really compare and see how these different approaches do produce different results or very similar results for that fact so let's get into number seven so number seven earning 17 million is bjork ingalls also known for his practice big architects now this should be no surprise that he is in the top

seven he has quite a few offices around the world and his firm has over 500 plus people with five different locations and they include london copenhagen barcelona new york and china and so he does a quite a wide range of projects from housing all the way to commercial institutional all sorts of different scales of projects as well and he's really known for his storytelling and his diagramming as well so what are his sources of income well first he has his own practice where he does architecture and builds and designs building but what i thought was

interesting as well is that he also has different products that he designs and also sells so he has lighting products he has a furniture line that he designs and builds different furnitures which he sells on his website he has as well a hardware line and different accessories which i recommend you to check out and he also of course as some of you might already know he has a source of income from his publications and books when i started to hear about big it was from his book yes is more he always enjoyed doing comics as

a kid and that also blended into his architectural career as well and so he did yes is more telling the story of what that building is through a comic strip which i thought was brilliant and that publication did really well and he has other books that he also sells talking about and breaking down the story of his buildings along with the products and books that he sells he also has integrated engineering into his practice so he has a few engineers within his practice and the brilliant thing about it is you have a lot better control

of the structure and of the design intent when you can actually integrate both the structural engineering and the architecture together and so by having engineers in his office you have a better control of that design tent and the opportunities to really explore the limits are a lot greater when you have structural engineers within your practice number six at 25 million renzo piano now renzo piano at some of the firms discussed today has a mid-sized firm with about 150 people and two offices one in italy and the main headquarters in france in paris in comparison to

a lot of the other architects talked about and even in comparison to big architects his practice is more of a mid-sized firm and what i've learned about renzo is that he likes to keep it at that scale and he's very selective of the projects as well now he has the ability to do that as well he established his practice in 1981 and his primary source of income is from building architecture but what i also notice in comparison to some of the other architects that we discuss in this video he has quite a few publications and

books and what i really like about renzo piano is his documentation process he really documents the process of the building he really keeps and archives all the models and what i read is that he has almost 6 000 models recorded in a database and he has more than 4 000 models stored in an archival system and i attended his exhibition here in toronto and what i noticed is that his archival system is amazing he keeps all the sketches he even kept his napkin sketches and it really is inspiring because i have to say that i

don't keep everything i tend to throw things away um and i realize how bad that is because you don't really get to see that growth of the project and that process and so it's so nice to see that evolution of the project when you keep all these sketches and so on so that's something that i really admire about renzo piano and he actually has quite a few publications and books per building where he really illustrates those sketches and all of that archival information and then he has books on just his collective works as well and

he has books on his more technical drawings where he really dives into the details and the technical side of his buildings which i thought are is brilliant as well so he's making some income as well from those publications alongside of his buildings number five and 95 million which should come at no surprise is zaha hadid now unfortunately zaha is no longer alive and with us however her legacy still continues to grow and she is one of the first female architects to have won the pretzel prize which is basically the nobel peace prize in architecture and

she really pushed the limits of architecture how she integrated structure parametric design really pushing the boundaries of architecture is phenomenal and her buildings are beautiful and they still continue to run her practice without her today outside of building buildings she also has a line of products and product design where she produces all sorts of accessories like bases wine bottles handmade rugs and so on and the list could go on she also has products in fashion where she's designed shoes handbags she's also done hats as well so she's done quite a few things and all the

products that she's designed it always has that same brand and the same style that she's done in her architecture as well and what i find interesting is that designing with products is actually also a good way to test your ideas from buildings into something more smaller scale which is easier to implement some of the ideas a form or testing function and so on and of course she also has a ton of publications and books where she's really documented her buildings and illustrated the process of them and how the ideas came to be and she's documented

that throughout her publication so that's another source of income as well number four at 100 million is santiago calatrava now i have to say as a young architecture student i was really inspired by his work his bridges especially and what i loved about his work was just the poetry of it and how he integrated architecture and structural and engineering together and it almost inspired me i was so close to get into structural engineering because of that integration but that then again i didn't go into structural engineering but i was almost so tempted to do it

just through his work his work in bridges airports railways he has quite a wide range of projects institutions and so on and what i really like about his work is that sculptural form and that natural kind of organic form that he has to his buildings and his structures as well and so i was looking into what are his sources of income and i would say mainly it would be from his buildings and structures other than that all i could see as well is that he does have several publications documenting his work and he did do

a lot of artwork because again calatrava was an engineer a sculptor so he enjoyed painting and creating sculptures and on his website you can see some of his artwork that he's done and the last piece of artwork was done in 2013. i'm not sure if he sold any of those pieces perhaps not but he did have a few different artworks and pieces that he was experimenting with number three also at 100 million is safty he designed the habitat 67 for the expo in montreal which i have to say is one of my favorite buildings and

out of all the architects talked about he's probably the one architect that has the smallest architecture practice and he tries to keep his team at around 65 people and i was fascinated by that as well now i don't know if he's produced as much work as some of the other architects talked about in this video doesn't seem so but i haven't dived into the exact numbers and also what's interesting is he has several offices so his main headquarters is in boston and he has satellite offices in jerusalem shanghai and singapore but the headquarters is where

it all starts and safti works on all the projects hands on which helps to control again that quality of design and so his firm has designed and realized over 15 billion dollars worth of construction in the past 10 years including some of the more complex projects and acclaimed projects in the world and currently the office is working on five projects which are in progress and for a firm that's around 65 people i have to say that is quite amazing and so this is interesting just to see how with a practice of around 65 people they

are still able to contribute and to earn around 100 million dollar net income with a smaller practice and still producing and outputting complex buildings as well so outside of creating buildings they do have and produce books highlighting their projects and illustrating the process and story behind their projects but outside of that i don't see them getting involved in other products or other things in comparison to some of the architects that we have spoken about number two also at a hundred million is frank gehry now frank gary out of all the architects that we've spoken to

is one of the oldest architects still practicing he's currently as of 2022 93 years old and he's still practicing and very much hands-on with his projects he only has one office which is based in la and out of all the other architects i have to say that his website is the most bare bones website that i've seen till this point it doesn't really highlight his projects or anything and it's not even graphically appealing either so i thought that was really interesting so there isn't a whole lot of information but some of the information that i've

known just through reading and just seeing throughout the years his main source of income seems to come from his buildings and architecture and then he also of course has publications books highlighting his buildings that document kind of the process and the ideas behind his building and so outside of that i know that he did dive into product design and he did a collaboration with tiffany producing earrings and so he actually produced a series of earrings and jewelry from his aesthetic i should also add that i believe frank gary also designed some furniture pieces and he

designed his own software in order to produce the designs that he really wanted to push the limits of structure and of materiality and really getting into the parametric design as well so that he's able to output these projects more effectively and efficiently as well number one on the list at 240 million is norman foster he has about 14 locations across the world so their teams at norman foster are integrated design teams with environmental engineering engineering structural engineering sustainability urban landscape design industrial design interior design research teams as well it's quite impressive and so they have

a sustainability sector they have an urban and landscape design sector within their practice environmental engineering where they also do simulations as well structural engineering all integrated in the practice and they also have industrial design where they produce different products as well and they have an interior design also integrated in their practice they have a whole research with robotics which looks so cool and they also have material research center and specialist modeling group so they are on top of the innovation pushing the forefront of architecture and you can see it through their practice of how they're

integrating all these teams together to really produce and make it as efficient as possible which ultimately results in profit as well so it's so fascinating to see how they're integrating all of these items by having these integrated teams they're also able to control the quality of the design and push the limits of architecture as well now i hope this video was insightful and also inspiring if it was make sure to like the video and if you'd like to see more videos you might also enjoy this video here and if you like to support the channel

make sure to subscribe and you can do that here i hope to see you on the next video until then bye [Music] you