Mithun

Mithun celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. After starting as a small two-person architecture firm in Bellevue, mainly designing housing, the firm has grown into an 160-person firm providing architecture, interior design, planning and landscape architecture for commercial, workplace, institutional, residential, health care, retail, hospitality and mixed-use projects in the United States and Asia.

The staff has doubled since 1995. The size has increased by 12 in the last year from 142 to 154, and gross revenue for 1999 was above $15 million. This year revenue is projected to be over $17 million.

While the firm’s major markets are in the Pacific Northwest and the West Coast, it has expanded its reach to the entire country and the world. Recently, for example, Mithun completed an REI “flagship-class” store near Tokyo. The firm also has just begun working on three large residential-care projects in Asia.

In April, Mithun moved its offices to Pier 56 on Seattle's downtown waterfront to support the growing staff and to provide a better work environment for the large teams and multiple projects in the office. At any one time, Mithun has over 230 active projects of varying sizes, from single-family homes to high-rise, mixed-use developments, to civic projects such as the Pacific Northwest Aquarium and Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center.

Plans for the future, according to marketing director Kipepeo Brown, involve expanding and building the current services, project types and geographic reach. Mithun will continually broaden the principles of sustainable building to all project types and services provided at the firm, she said. There will be a growing focus on “green” design, requiring architects, engineers and other building consultants to create and be aware of new technologies and products.

With the shrinking availability of land and the resurrection of urban living, Mithun is also planning for more mixed-use and urban development, ranging in size to full block developments with residential, workplace, health care and hospitality components.