The 10 Most Influential Design and Build Companies of 2026

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Apr 29, 2026 12:21 PM CUT

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Apr 29, 2026 12:21 PM CUT

This year, TIME editors launch the TIME100 Companies: Industry Leaders lists, an expansion of the TIME100 Most Influential Companies issue that dives deeper into 20 sectors to look at the companies shaping their industries. These are the 10 most influential companies in design and build of 2026.

Ennead Architects

Accessibility by design

As the venue for The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park, which presents A-list actors in the theater canon each summer, New York City’s Delacorte Theater has made culture more accessible to the masses for decades. To continue this tradition, Ennead Architects spearheaded the Central Park venue’s $85 million renovation, completed in 2025. The new and improved Delacorte now has 34 accessible seats (up from 14), a permanent stage ramp for performers with mobility issues, an accessible control booth, and double the number of fixtures in the women’s restrooms. All this enhanced accessibility has had a knock-on effect, according to the project’s lead architect, Ennead’s Stephen Chu. “It prompted the park to also upgrade all its paths to the theater,” Chu says. “Getting to the original theater was not really accessible. All the paved paths going to it from every direction have been, or are being, readdressed.” Ennead also overhauled the theater’s previously leaky and decrepit backstage area, adding “purpose-built dressing rooms, bigger hallways, and HVAC climate control,” according to the firm’s website. This summer, the revitalized Delacorte will stage perhaps the Bard’s most famous play: “Romeo and Juliet”. —Jessica Hullinger

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WeWork

A masterful turnaround
Few corporate comebacks have been as swift or as complete: office real estate company WeWork emerged from bankruptcy debt-free, returned to profitability in 2025, and closed the year with nearly $2.3 billion in revenue. "When that first profitable quarter was followed by a second, and then a third, you could feel the momentum—not just in the numbers, but in the confidence of the organization," says WeWork CEO John Santora. Nearly half of the Fortune 100 are now WeWork members, part of what Santora describes as a broader shift in how companies balance their portfolios between owned, long-term lease, and flex space. To serve that demand, WeWork itself is evolving beyond its traditional landlord role. For clients like Amazon, it does more than provide farflung employees a place to go, also sourcing turnkey office space for the company. The new WeWork model is resonating beyond U.S. borders: In late 2025, a WeWork-branded $338 million India IPO was fully subscribed. —Joe Mullich

KB Home

Building fire-safe communities

As wildfires increasingly threaten California communities and make homes uninsurable, KB Home is rethinking what it means to build responsibly. In March 2025, the Los Angeles-based homebuilder opened Dixon Trail in Escondido, the first neighborhood in the nation certified by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), the body that sets the bar for what qualifies as a fire-safe home. Ten months later, KB Home did it again with Stone Canyon in Cameron Park, the first such community in Northern California to meet the rigorous IBHS standard. "When it comes to wildfires, there is only so much protection a single homesite can provide on its own," says Rob McGibney, president and CEO of KB Home. "By building an entire community to the IBHS standard, we are making every home safer by creating a safer neighborhood." 

The homes look like any other subdivision, until you notice the steel fences disguised as wood, the double-paned tempered glass windows, the wire mesh over gutters and vents, and the moat of gravel ringing every foundation. Another quiet benefit: McGibney says these safer homes may also deliver lower insurance costs for residents. —Joe Mullich

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Kraemer North America

Wildlife-saving infrastructure

A particularly perilous 3.7-mile stretch of Colorado’s Interstate 25 used to see an average of one wildlife-vehicle collision per day. “That’s smashed-up cars, that’s injuries, and yes, even fatalities,” Chuck Attardo, an environmental manager at the Colorado Department of Transportation, told Rocky Mountain Construction. The collisions also accounted for at least 10% of I-25’s delays. In 2025, Wisconsin-based contractor Kraemer North America built the new Greenland Wildlife Overpass—which, at 200 ft. wide and 209 ft. long, is reportedly the world’s largest wildlife crossing over a major roadway, and is expected to dramatically improve those statistics. Spanning six lanes of traffic on I-25, where over 100,000 vehicles travel every day, the overpass connects 39,000 acres and allows previously isolated wildlife to roam, promoting genetic diversity to help ensure their survival. Kraemer finished the overpass ahead of schedule in less than a year and for $15 million—half of CDOT’s initial estimate. CDOT expects the Greenland Wildlife Overpass, along with nearby wildlife underpasses used by smaller animals, to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions by 90%. —Novid Parsi

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Exodigo

More accurate underground maps

Exodigo is an underground mapping platform that combines ground-penetrating radar, electromagnetic sensors, and AI to create maps that are 99% accurate—up from the industry standard of 50%—without any digging. "What's documented and what's underground are two very different realities," says Jeremy Suard, CEO of the Israeli startup. He provides an example: When a Midwestern department of transportation was replacing a bridge, it wanted to verify decades-old maps that placed a 78-inch sewer pipe safely out of the way. Exodigo found the pipe was actually 9 ft. closer than originally thought, and directly in the construction path. Identifying the discrepancy before shovels broke ground saved $10 million in change-order costs and avoided a wastewater release, rail shutdowns, and environmental damage.

In 2025, more than 50 transit agencies and infrastructure owners worldwide, including Amtrak and LA Metro, hired Exodigo to map $75 billion worth of projects. Some of those clients reveal the scale of the problem: Utilities have hired Exodigo because they can't find their own pipes. —Joe Mullich

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Heneghan Peng Architects

Building an icon

Twenty-two years ago, a three-person Dublin architecture firm beat out 1,557 competitors from 80 countries to win one of the most ambitious architectural commissions in modern history. When the new Grand Egyptian Museum finally opened its doors in November 2025, just a mile from the Pyramids of Giza, it validated every year of the wait. The largest museum ever built dedicated to a single civilization, it is designed to accommodate more than 100,000 ancient artifacts, including the complete contents of Tutankhamun's tomb displayed together for the first time.

The building was an instant icon. “From the very beginning, our design for the Grand Egyptian Museum would be an unfinished work, completed only by the view at the top of the ascent of the Grand Staircase, to the Great Pyramids of Giza,” says Heneghan Peng Architects co-founder Róisín Heneghan. 

The museum can accommodate up to 8 million visitors annually and is already reshaping global conversations about cultural heritage. “The Grand Egyptian Museum was, is, and will always be a story marked by reunion,” says Heneghan, “reconnecting previously broken ties between modernity and history, and history and place.” —Joe Mullich

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Icon

3D-printing construction leader

Icon is 3D printing homes to address two deeply related problems: the national affordable housing crisis and the construction worker shortage. The Texas-based company’s large robotic printers move around construction sites, extruding concrete layer by layer to form walls while significantly reducing material waste compared with traditional methods. CEO Jason Ballard says 3D printing delivers 20-30% total cost savings while maintaining quality across price points. "The benefit of robotic construction is there is no difference in product whether it's a luxury home or an affordable home," he says.

Icon has erected more than 230 structures in the U.S. and Mexico, including homes for the unhoused, as well as 100 homes in the world’s largest 3D-printed community. Last year, Icon broke ground on a series of affordable 1-bedroom homes in Austin’s Mueller community, with units starting at $195,000. Now the company is licensing its Titan 3D construction printers—which can produce multi-story structures—to other builders. —Joe Mullich

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Guizhou Communications Investment Group

Connecting rural China

For decades, the Southwest Chinese province of Guizhou was known mostly for its dramatic mountainous terrain that constrained trade, slowed development, and isolated some of the country’s poorest communities. But in recent years the province has come to represent Beijing’s drive to remake its interior, as one of China’s fastest growing provinces by gross domestic product and an emerging hub for big data and green energy. Guizhou Communications Investment Group has led that transformation. The firm, alongside other provincial partners, has developed high-altitude construction and wind-resistant engineering techniques, enabling the construction of essential transportation infrastructure that connects remote parts of Guizhou with regional and national markets. In September, the group completed the world’s tallest bridge. Standing at 2,050 feet above the Beipan River and nearly twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, the Huajiang Canyon Bridge is not only a tourist attraction, but a driver of economic growth, cutting travel time across the gorge from two hours to two minutes. —Miranda Jeyaretnam 

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Webuild

Global construction innovator

Webuild has become the contractor of choice for the infrastructure projects the world most needs but often finds hardest to build. In September, the Italian construction firm completed Africa's largest hydropower dam, a $5 billion project 14 years in the making that is designed to double Ethiopia's energy production and supply surplus power across East Africa.

Webuild has also helped advance modern construction with new tunneling methods that cut through waterlogged ground, machines that dig tunnels using less energy, and automated factories that mass-produce the large concrete rings lining underground railways and water systems. Last year it broke through the Alps to connect Italy and Austria with the Brenner Base Tunnel, which is set to become the world's longest underground railway. —Joe Mullich

Tideway

Modernizing Victorian sewers

London’s Victorian-era sewer system couldn’t keep up with the dual challenges of population growth and climate change. Rainfall regularly overwhelmed the 150-year-old system, sending discharges directly into the Thames River. Now, London’s new £4.6 billion ($6.1 billion) “super sewer”—the largest water infrastructure project in U.K. history—prevents 95% of untreated sewage discharges. Over 10 years of construction, the 15.5-mile Thames Tideway Tunnel created 21 connections with the original sewers to capture, divert, and treat sewage that would otherwise end up in the river. By the time it became fully operational in February 2025, Tideway had already collected 2,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of sewage. A year later, it had collected more than three times that amount. The project also delivered public parks and art installations along the waterway. “As the tunnel continues to operate, we expect to see the river respond and improve over time, with lasting benefits for wildlife, river users, and London for generations to come,” Jad Bhudia, Tideway’s system commissioning manager, said in a statement. —Novid Parsi

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