Rarely has a year been so keenly awaited and so freighted with expectation. We made it to 2021 – but will it deliver on our hopes?

There will be difficult days ahead, but there are reasons for optimism, including a Brexit deal between the UK and EU and a new US administration. Best of all, we began the year with something that a few months before seemed even more improbable: the rollout of vaccines to contain covid-19.

With them comes the hope that business will pick up as confidence returns, but when this will be is harder to predict. All the architects interviewed for this year’s WA100 agree that global stagnation is the best we can expect in early 2021.

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