When an economic recession takes a kick at your business, a seven-legged stool is much harder to knock down than a three-legged stool. That’s how one partner with the Richmond-based architectural and design firm 3north described the company’s approach to sustainable business. “In prior downturns, residential work really helped carry us through,“ said Jay Hugo, one of the four principals in the firm that was founded in 2000.

Area architectural firms specializing in church-related design work have been in seventh heaven in recent years. A church-construction boom kept those firms very busy. “The first seven years of the new millennium had the highest volume of construction I’ve seen in 30 years of practice,“ said James DePasquale, president of the DePasquale Gentilhomme Group Architects, which has done design work on about 150 churches and faith-based buildings, including Poplar Springs Baptist Church.