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A national interiors firm, based in San Francisco, is expanding into Portland and hiring local design professionals to join its staff.

IA Interior Architects‘ Portland office is scheduled to open in early January 2015, said Richelle Nolan, who will serve as managing director. Firm staffers will move into a 5,000-square-foot office at 1401 N.W. Couch St. in the Pearl District.

Nolan is moving from San Francisco to Portland to lead the new office. Over the past three weeks, she has interviewed numerous Portland-area designers to eventually fill 22 positions.

Firm leaders have talked for close to a year about expanding into Portland; they see the city as a relatively untapped market for an interiors-only firm, Nolan said.

鈥淲e really feel that this is such a great design community in Portland, and it’s kind of an underserved market,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 feel that market will be such a great market to get into to enhance what’s already there. We feel we can advance those existing properties and real estate.鈥�

Most interior design work in Portland is performed by architecture firms’ interiors departments or a few smaller interior design firms, Nolan said. Plenty of opportunities exist for Interior Architects designers to partner with Portland architecture firms that don’t have interiors departments or work independently on interior projects, she said. This will likely include corporate, commercial real estate and hospitality and health care projects.

鈥淲e can work with local architects and really improve the interiors in Portland,鈥� she said.