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Union founder, Don Powers included among Traditional Building’s “Top 25 Leaders”

Traditional Building | October 2024


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(excerpted from the article):

In his 35 years as an architect, Donald W. Powers, a founding partner of Providence-based Union Studio Architecture & Community Design, has helped establish placemaking, walkability, and human scale as a basic standard of community design. His 24-year-plus association with the Congress for the New Urbanism and frequent collaboration with some of the best design firms and developers in the country that are doing traditional urban design has made him an expert in the technique and art of creating livable communities.

Powers, who has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master’s in architecture from Harvard University, has demonstrated over and over again that the highest levels of design excellence can and should be applied to every commission, even seemingly modest and utilitarian ones. “I’ve directed my career and the focus of the firm we founded toward the needs of communities, new and old,” he says. “We found that rather than our creative efforts being in service of a personal artistic vision, directing them outwards toward sociaI and civic needs makes our work so much more meaningful and relevant.”

Some of Union’s key projects include Veridian at County Farm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of the nation’s first mixed-income, mixed-use net-zero energy communities: Emerson Green, a net-zero-possible neighborhood with over 120 housing units in Devens, Massachusetts; and Sandywoods Farm Arts Community, an arts and agricultural center in Tiverton, Rhode Island, that features affordable rental and market-rate housing with a working farm, mixed-use retail, and a-studio, gallery, and performance space for artists.

“Architecture can and should celebrate the modest stuff that makes up our cities and towns and forms the background of our lives,” he says. “I am proud of Union Studio’s portfolio of work that elevates the mundane, and through serious design, celebrates the building types and clients that the profession too often ignores.”