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POWER LIST: ARCHITECTURE

Works Progress Architecture鈥檚 name evokes the New Deal, but its designs offer a portal to cutting-edge architecture.

The firm has developed a design signature with its repeated use of rectangular, protruding glass on buildings such as Slate, Flatiron and 811 Stark. Yet the move still feels sleek and contemporary, bold without lapsing into gimmickry.

WPA isn鈥檛 afraid to try something different, like its prominent use of vertically laid asphalt shingles at the Instagram-friendly Jupiter Hotel. It has proved equally adept designing with mass timber or concrete and steel. And in an industry that often lauds older, male 鈥渟tarchitects,鈥� co-founder and principal Carrie Strickland has wrought progress in more ways than mere design.

The firm grew in June 2020 with the addition of Brian Cavanaugh鈥檚 practice, Architecture Building Culture. Cavanaugh is now design principal for WPA, bringing experience including the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon.

The firm that once contented itself with relatively small-scale projects like adaptive reuse of Central Eastside warehouses, has grown its capacity substantially. Now, larger and with a Los Angeles office, the firm is engaged in designing a 1 million-square-foot mixed-use development in San Fernando, California, for developer Uncommon. WPA is responsible for designing two buildings with about 340 residential units, 40,000 square feet of commercial and amenity space, two parking garages and a plaza.

Locally, WPA is wrapping up Nomad, a North Portland apartment building, for Ethos Development. WPA also is in early talks to design a large-scale private development in Eugene; that project has yet to be publicly unveiled, Cavanaugh said.

That鈥檒l work.