aidlin darling design

With a shared interest in exploring design across a wide range of scales, programs, and disciplines, Principals Joshua Aidlin and David Darling started Aidlin Darling Design in 1998. Based in San Francisco, the firm has a broad focus including institutional, commercial and residential architecture, as well as furniture, landscape and interior design.

Aidlin Darling’s emphasis on designing for all of the senses has cultivated a diverse and collaborative studio that acts as the creative hub for an extended network of builders, fabricators, designers, artists, engineers, and chefs. This collaborative process provides an open and impassioned exploration with clients and partners, and enables a clear understanding of appropriate solutions. The individual character of each project emerges through poetic spatial relationships, material richness, and exacting detail.

The firm has garnered over 100 regional, national, and international awards including the 2013 National Design Award-by the Smithsonian’s Cooper- Hewitt Nation Design Museum for their complete body of work, a James Beard Award, two National AIA “COTE” awards for excellence in sustainable design, four American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, an International Civic Trust Award, and several awards from the AIA, IIDA, and ASLA.

Recent projects cover a wide range of scale and project type, both regionally and as far away as Hong Kong and Doha Qatar. They include a contemplative art chapel at Stanford University, a media arts cultural center, a college preparatory high school, a rural gallery and performing arts facility, several restaurants, and four wineries in Northern California that push the boundaries of sustainability in agriculture and building.