News
Traditional Building: “Excellent and Fair”
On the heels of Union's win of the 2023 Gindroz Award for Excellence in Affordable Housing, Traditional Building Magazine interviews Union founder Donald Powers.
In Providence and Philadelphia, Union designs award-winning affordable housing.
Armed with a 1988 undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and a 1992 master’s from Harvard Graduate School of Design, Don Powers immediately went to work for marquis firms in Boston.
It was not an ideal experience for him. Powers was concerned less with high-end design and more with big-picture solutions to the urban challenges he witnessed daily from his bus ride to work.
“I thought there had to be something more meaningful than designing handrails at Phillips Exeter,” he says. “I wanted to be more relevant than working with well-heeled institutions.”