Christie Porter
Left Room for
Someone Else

Before Christie Porter had a company called ONE NINE Architecture, she had a request she wanted to say yes to. A nonprofit needed help designing a missionary campus in Mexico. The site covered 22 acres. Taking it seriously meant finding room for work that did not fit neatly around somebody else’s business.

Porter started her practice in 2018. The campus was part of the reason. It gave a specific address to an ambition she had carried through years in architecture and interior design: to use those skills for people who needed them, including organizations with more plans than money.

There is something revealing about that order of events. The usual account of a growing business puts charitable work somewhere after success, once the office has enough desks and the founder has enough breathing room. Porter made the obligation part of the original brief. The spare room would have to be designed into the business.

Twenty-two acres of a reason

The proposed Frontline Missions campus is in Santo Tomas, Baja California. Its plans include housing, classrooms, community space, workshops and places for volunteers. ONE NINE lists the project as ongoing. This is an undertaking with a future tense, and the distinction belongs in the story.

A campus begins with questions long before it becomes a collection of buildings. Who will live there? What will happen in each space? How can an organization explain the plan well enough for other people to help? For a nonprofit, a design team can make an ambition easier to discuss, organize and fund.

Porter’s decision was personal as well as professional. She had experienced poverty and periods of homelessness as a child. Other people had helped her family with necessities. In her account of becoming a founder, that help carries forward as an obligation to do something useful for someone else.

Christian faith gives the practice its name. ONE NINE refers to Joshua 1:9, a passage about courage and God’s presence. Porter wanted a reminder she could carry into the uncertainty of ownership. She also preferred a name that could belong to the people doing the work together.

“what we do takes a team”

Christie Porter, on choosing the ONE NINE name

The name therefore does two jobs. It holds a private source of resolve in public view, and it leaves space for colleagues. That second job matters in a profession where a founder’s surname can take up a considerable amount of wall.

The people who made a profession possible

Porter’s interest in making places began with Lego and Lincoln Logs. A cousin studying interior design gave her an early look at the field. Later, a friend’s father, a contractor, shared drawings and answered questions. People around her helped make university seem possible and helped her navigate applying.

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Architecture at California State University, Long Beach, becoming the first in her family to attend and graduate from a university. Work accompanied the degree: several jobs, including time at Kinko’s and a small photography business. Weddings and events helped pay the bills. The career arrived through a crowded calendar.

Her experience later included nine years at IA Interior Architects and work at a smaller firm. By the time she founded ONE NINE, she had spent years inside the industry. Starting a practice gave her a way to decide how that experience would be used.

That history makes mentoring a particularly natural part of her work. A drawing shared with a curious young person can have consequences the person sharing it will never be able to calculate. Porter’s career contains several such acts of encouragement. Her later involvement with emerging designers gives that attention another destination.

In 2025, she announced a new Orange County cohort of IIDA Southern California’s Emerging Leaders program as a co-chair. The work brings her into the part of a career where introductions, practical advice and access to experienced people can make a difference. Someone has to organize those rooms, too.

A room of one’s own, with a plan

ONE NINE for Humanity, the nonprofit sister organization, gives Porter’s original intention a structure beyond the architecture practice. Its mission connects design services with resources, mentoring and training. The ambition is international, but some of its documented work takes place at the scale of a child’s bedroom.

In Colton, California, a bedroom makeover contest led to work on a girl’s room. The organization then helped with a room shared by her three brothers. Its project pages mark both bedrooms complete. Here the unit of design becomes wonderfully specific: a place to sleep, some room to belong, a part of the house shaped around its occupants.

A bedroom has no need to impress a skyline. Its audience returns every evening. That makes it a useful test of a designer’s attention. The people using the space have to live with the decisions, and the value of those decisions is felt in ordinary routines.

The firm’s nonprofit portfolio also includes a completed food pantry project for Dwelling Place in Anaheim and work at Gigi’s Playhouse in Laguna Hills. Elsewhere, it lists ongoing projects, including pro bono design for the Campa family’s home in Altadena after a fire. Different assignments call for different kinds of help.

The connection is a willingness to apply professional effort to practical circumstances. A warehouse can be reorganized for distributing food. An existing interior can be made more useful. A family rebuilding a home can receive design assistance. None of these tasks is completed by goodwill alone; someone still has to do the work.

The sample library gets another job

Porter’s attention also follows what a project leaves behind. Architecture and interiors generate leftovers: samples, surplus orders, furnishings and materials that have finished one assignment without becoming useless. Her related businesses give some of those objects a possible next step.

ONE NINE Mercantile grew from that observation. Materials from projects and jobsites could be repurposed into everyday products. A portion of purchases supports ONE NINE for Humanity. It is a small commercial mechanism attached to a larger purpose, with making and selling still required in between.

The practice calls its reuse effort Close the Loop. It accepts a range of materials, including furniture, doors, flooring and textiles. Some donations can reduce material costs on nonprofit projects. Scraps and samples can also become products whose sales help reduce design fees.

That distinction gives the program two routes. A useful object might go into another space directly. A smaller piece might need to be made into something a customer wants. The process depends on judgment about what can actually be used, rather than the mere satisfaction of keeping a thing.

Its shop describes locally handmade products made from recycled materials, including leather, tile and other donated fabrics. The firm also points to jewelry fashioned from small scraps. The scale is almost comic beside a campus plan: an architectural practice with an interest in something that can fit in an earring box.

The underlying question remains consistent. What is available, who could use it, and what work would connect the two? In Porter’s business, that question travels between professional time, supplier relationships and physical things. Each offers a different way to contribute.

An award, and the people beyond the founder

In 2022, IIDA named Porter the recipient of its Anna Hernandez/Luna Textiles Visionary Award, which recognizes a woman business owner’s contribution to the design industry. The award included $5,000 from the IIDA Foundation. Its announcement identified the architecture practice, nonprofit and mercantile business together.

The presentation took place at IIDA’s annual meeting at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It offered a public occasion for a body of work that moved between several organizations. The recognition concerned a founder, while the work itself depended on a wider cast.

ONE NINE’s current leadership includes Ethan Porter as CFO and COO, Chris Lindholm as lead architect and technical director, and Erin Torres as managing principal. Design and technical colleagues complete the roster. Finance, operations and technical responsibility all need a place beside the original idea.

The firm is certified by WBENC as a Women’s Business Enterprise. BBB also identifies it as a 2025 Torch Award for Ethics winner. Those are business credentials with their own purposes. Alongside the design award, they show several ways the practice has entered the wider professional community.

Porter’s story keeps returning to the people around a project. Someone once answered her questions about drawings. A nonprofit brought her a campus to consider. Colleagues bring the skills needed to run a practice. Donors supply objects with another useful life ahead of them.

A company can make room for those contributions, provided somebody decides they belong there. Porter made that decision when the business was still an idea. The campus remains an ongoing project. Around it, she has built a practice where helping someone else has a place in the plan.