Carrie Strickland (Works Progress Architecture)
BY BRIAN LIBBY
A couple weeks ago when I visited Works Progress Architecture founding principal Carrie Strickland at the firm's Southeast Portland offices, change seemed to be in the air.
It happened to be the first day of spring, with buds on the trees outside. I knew I was coming there to talk about the new era of the firm following the departure of co-founding principal William Neburka, arguably the strongest design voice at WPA in the past, as well as the string of new projects that Strickland and her team have in the works. Perhaps that was why as I looked at a directory near the elevator denoting the suite occupied by each client — WPA, Maybe and Uncorked Studios — it seemed as if it were spelling out the phrase "WPA may be uncorked."
Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but I liked the idea that, while there's no doubt Neburka is exceptionally talented and the firm's succession of design awards speak to that, perhaps there will now be a chance to unleash a new generation of talents. I supposed I was there to see if WPA may indeed be uncorked.
Directory at 811 Stark (Brian Libby)
As Strickland entered the conference room and we exchanged pleasantries, I learned that she had recently been in a motorcycle crash. Though she could have been seriously injured, she walked away from the crash with no broken bones. Hopefully that's another good omen. Then there's the name change that happened a year or two ago: from Works Partnership Architecture to Works Progress Architecture.
There's no question that WPA has been one of Portland's best architecture firms over the past decade. Founded in 2005, the firm first gained notice for warehouse renovations in the Central Eastside for Beam Development such as 2007's Olympic Mills Commerce Center. Works began a new chapter of eye-popping new buildings such as 2009's bSIDE6 along lower Burnside just east of the bridge. More recently, the firm has won awards and critical acclaim for projects like Slate, a mixed-use apartment building at Burnside Bridgehead (winner of a 2016 Mayor's Design Award from the AIA); Framework, a jewel of a wood-framed and glass-ensconced office building on nearby Couch Street (winner of a 2016 Merit Award from the AIA), and the Doppelganger multifamily housing project (winner of a 2017 Citation Award from the AIA). I'm also a big fan of their Bowstring Truss House from 2013 (which I wrote about for Dwell), their Langano Apartments from 2015 on Southeast Hawthorne, and the building from which I interviewed Strickland and WPA calls home, 811 Stark.
Meanwhile, WPA has another significant local project about to open: an expansion of the Jupiter Hotel on East Burnside, with a distinctive form and bold use of materials. And the firm is increasingly branching out to other cities, with a new office in Los Angeles and a succession of projects upcoming in Denver.
Renderings of an upcoming performance venue in Denver (Works Progress Architecture)
Here is an edited transcript of the lunchtime conversation Strickland and I had over croissant sandwiches in the WPA conference room.
Portland Architecture: Coming into its 13th year, WPA has seen some major transitions. Despite not making a big formal announcement, I’m sure most people know that you are now the primary leadership of the office. I know you can’t talk about the specifics of Bill Neburka’s departure, but it’s a big departure. How has the firm evolved?
Carrie Strickland: It is interesting. I get a lot of questions about that. Obviously it’s a significant shift in how I’ve always talked about WPA and how we’ve presented ourselves. In reality that transition was gentler and not as disruptive as many outside of the office maybe thought it would have been. I have a pretty strict gag order of not talking about what happened and why, but [I’m] feeling it’s certainly for the best and for the health of the office and what we are and what we’re doing and how we’re moving forward.
One result of the transition is that this is an architecture firm with all-female leadership. How noteworthy is that? After all, there is gender balance in architecture schools but not in the profession itself.
I think that’s one thing that’s come out of this that I’m excited about. For a number of years we’ve been a majority women-staffed firm, which is fairly unique for a firm of our size. Then for three full years we’ve been a majority women-owned firm. But the way it was structured, Bill and I still had an equal voice, and Jen [Dzienis], who has been a partner for three years. Now that it’s just Jen and I as partners, we’re a 100 percent woman-owned firm. Looking out and knowing how design firms work, it’s something pretty unique and rare. And where we’re doing work, it’s fairly unusual.
Rendering of upcoming Jupiter Hotel expansion (Works Progress Architecture)
Could having a majority woman-owned and woman-staffed firm help create an environment that better helps female architects stay in profession, like with greater flexibility as it relates to matters like child care or part-time work?
There was a study put out a few years ago [by Equity by Design]: The Missing 32 Percent Project. Coming through school and even close to grad rates, they’re fairly 50/50. But by the time you get to your early thirties, 32 percent have disappeared. I do think you get to a point where you feel like as a woman you’re expected to make a choice between one thing or the other. I know I wanted to be a positive example of that, but maybe I’m a poor one. I had two kids, raised them, and I have one son who’s 20 down at San Diego State now, and I have a sophomore in high school. It’s never been something I’ve focused on in a way that said I needed to focus on one thing or another. I’ve had times where I’m probably not the picture of good balance. But I think I’ve talked to my kids about it. They saw me making tough choices and knew it was about personal drive and ambition, and not about compromising my investment in family and in their lives. In general I think there is still a bit of an assumption, and maybe it’s more of a regional thing too.
What’s funny to me is I think probably because where we are in the history of the practice and our general average staff age, we have a lot of people getting married, starting families. We have two out on maternity leave now. It’s kind of a new experience for us. I had my kids before starting the practice. Jen had her son a good five years into the practice. But we haven’t had a lot of active family rearing to be able to set an example. We do have that opportunity right now. I remember speaking out a women-in-design round-table discussion and getting into not an argument but a lively discussion with another woman about careers and making a choice. Her argument was you either choose to be this business person or this family person. It really bothered me. Even though we’re here in the modern age, it was alarming to me that people saw it as this choice you had to make.
bSIDE6 (Stephen A. Miller)
I did have my kids fairly young. That came with its own collection of hardships and challenges. But I do feel now because my kids are old enough to be away at college or fairly self-sufficient, I do have an opportunity now with the stage the practice is in to refocus and reinvest. I’m 93 percent owner of the firm. The level of hours and thought that I feel I can focus on the practice and architecture in general is maybe more than 10 years ago.
Could you talk about some of the talent you have at the firm now, and how perhaps they are enabled to do meaningful work more now than ever before?
One thing I want to make sure and note is that as we’ve grown and certainly started working in other markets, building a strong studio full of people who are project designers or project managers and other kinds of leaders building and maintaining client relationships, that had been happening for the last several years. Bill and I both had stepped into roles of more…I was maintaining the face of the office and that brand management, and Bill was stepping into more of a role of editor. This ownership transition is allowing people already here to more freely communicate within the studio. And it’s becoming more obvious where the body of work is coming from. Bill and I always talked about the firm as two halves of one great architect. We kind of propagated that idea. It’s not that it’s shifted but there are more people involved: Jen obviously as partner; Ian Role, who’s been with us for several years as a design director in the office; Judson Moore, who has been one of our design mangers for years.
Slate (Brian Libby)
And then the other big change is that looking at the core nucleus of the studio for overall strategic development, and whether it’s identifying regions of interest or similarities in other markets, bringing on a director of operations, which we’ve never had before. His name is Michael Reis. Between that nucleus of Jen and I and Ian and Jud and Michael setting a new direction for the firm, and having the comfort and free communication to talk through that and set a course, I think the one thing we’re seeing right now—I don’t want to say it’s always better—the studio is truly acting in its best collaborative form. We’d always talked about it as a collaborative. The whole idea of the name was not having any one person’s fingerprint too heavily, that were all doing this together in a studio. We always talked about it like that. I think the big shift in the last ten months is it’s truly operating that way. There’s a lot of discussion and sharing of ideas. There’s a lot of cross-pollination happening. It’s getting clients to understand that too. There’s a perceivable difference in tone and spirit.
How might the personnel change lead to an evolution of style? Obviously each project is different, and the firm’s style has always evolved, but there was a certain fingerprint I think one could especially associate with recent buildings like Slate, Framework and here at 811 Stark.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. I think one way we used to describe ourselves…a writer talked about how our work walks the line between sexy and stern. I think that holds true as you look through the work. Slate, maybe this building we’re in, there’s a commonality of language. It almost feels like there was a slowdown in investigation. There’s a commonality there—you’re mining the same thread—whereas we’d previously been more fluid. I think now we’ve picked up the fluid exploration again. Concept is still a really big part of all the projects: a clear seed that’s carried forward. We’re doing a pretty sizable collection of buildings in Denver now. They’re all post transition. They’re a little more lively. I don’t want to say they’re whimsical. I still bring the whip to crack things back onto the stern side. There’s still a strong concept, but there’s a lightness to the projects now that I find refreshing. And that feels like a notable difference. We’re less than a year into it. But we’re already seeing the result. I think what we keep calling the Burns Block but is actually called 550 MLK: it was approved and that’s a bit of the new era, for example.
Rendering of the upcoming 550 MLK (Works Progress Architecture)
Can you talk a bit more about that project?
The project itself is seven stories. It’s half hotel, half traditional apartments. It’s a partner project with the Schleifer Furniture building’s adaptive reuse. The same operator will run both. There’s this relationship to the historic building, and drawing a line from the Grand Avenue Historic District to this side, not in it. It builds a relationship to the historic building, but it’s also a very kind of modern, fragmented, traditional masonry building. Sometimes there’s a fear that you’ll overshadow the historic building, but I think it highlights and allows more appreciation of the historic fabric and highlighting its timelessness.
WPA also seems to be branching out of Portland, with the new Los Angeles office and commissions in other cities.
I think that in the last year coupled with this transition internally, more and more of our work is outside Portland. For the most part it’s people seeking us out for bringing that thought process or materiality. There’s a kind of no-nonsense approach that’s less about style and more about function. It’s something I’ve always done as a practicing architect. But it’s not how most people work. It’ll be interesting in the next few years to see what influence WPA can have on those other urban markets.
It does really seem like WPA has left a huge imprint on the Central Eastside when you combine renovation projects like Eastbank Commerce Center and the Olympic Mills Commerce Center with new construction like Slate, Framework, 811 Stark and now the Jupiter Hotel and some other upcoming projects as well.
It does prove that it doesn’t have to be one intersection, but how many pins do you put on a map before there’s a critical mass and a sea-change effect.
Framework (Joshua Jay Elliot)
[We move away from the interview room and Carrie shows me a quintet of projects in Denver, including a music venue, as well as a tower in Los Angeles.]
Besides the tower, what else in L.A. is the firm doing?
It’s not the same scale, but Stumptown’s doing a big new reinvestment in the L.A. market and we’re doing their stores…and Central Office [the coworking site occupying the ground floor of Slate] is expanding in L.A. and we’re doing some work for them too.
Have you spent much time reflecting on the journey Works has made over the past 13 years, or how that compares to where you're headed now?
I was made an AIA Fellow this year, and my design impact statement talks about the Central Eastside and Portland in general. Even prior to WPA, being involved in the Eastbank Commerce Center and stuff with Beam Development and Brad Malsin: I can say over a 16-year time period what impact has that had on a district. It’ll be interesting to zoom out ten years from now and look at how it’s impacted other cities as well.
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