Ellen van Loon, a partner at OMA who joined the firm in 1998 following a period at Foster + Partners, has stepped down after 26 years. Based out of OMA’s Rotterdam office, van Loon, who was a presenter at RECORD’s 2021 Innovation Conference, led award-winning building projects including Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal (2005), recipient of a 2007 RIBA European Award, and the Dutch Embassy in Berlin (2003), winner of the European Union Mies van der Rohe Award in 2005. She also made significant contributions to De Rotterdam, a mixed-use complex that ranks as one of the largest buildings in the Netherlands, and was the chief architect on the ultra-flexible arts center Aviva Studios, the new home for the UK’s biennial Manchester International Festival, that opened last year.

Noting that van Loon has retired from the OMA partnership, a brief statement from the firm indicated that van Loon, the longtime sole female partner, “wishes to enter a new phase in her life in which she will have more time to herself. It goes without saying that we deeply regret her decision. Ellen has been a trusted colleague and powerful force within our firm for decades.” Managing partner David Gianotten adds: “Since its inception, the OMA partnership has constantly been in movement. As with partnerships in other professions, people leave and people join. We are certain that new partners will join in due course; this obviously includes female partners, too.”

OMA, whose practice is currently thriving with numerous just-completed and soon-to-open projects, continues to be led by Rem Koolhaas, who turns 80 in November. He and six other partners including Gianotten, oversee offices in Hong Kong and New York in addition to Rotterdam. Reinier de Graaf, known as much for his writings including Four Walls and a Roof and Architect, Verb, as his built work, joined the firm in 1996. Chris van Duijn led the recently opened Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux, France. Iyad Alsaka is responsible for OMA’s work in the Middle East and Africa. Shohei Shigematsu, who recently completed OMA’s largest project to date, Tokyo’s Toranomon Hills Station Tower, and whose addition to New York’s New Museum is slated to open next June, leads the New York office. Jason Long, also in New York, has spearheaded work on a number of adaptive reuse projects including the Lantern, one of several anchor projects in Detroit’s burgeoning Little Village arts district, and POST Houston, as well as a pair of residential towers on the Brooklyn waterfront.

“The firm is in good shape, and we are positive about the near- and mid-term future,” says Gianotten. “Politically, the world has become more complex to navigate, but OMA has been able to acquire new work worldwide within all architectural typologies, to enter into new markets, and to proactively initiate research and projects. We feel optimistic about this continuing.”