With a shared interest in exploring design across a wide range of scales, programs, and disciplines, partners Joshua Aidlin and David Darling started Aidlin Darling Design around a woodshop in 1998. With an emphasis on designing for all of the senses, they have cultivated a diverse and collaborative studio that acts as the creative hub for an extended network of builders, fabricators, artists, engineers, chefs, and other collaborators. The firm’s work explores a closely held conviction that design can enlighten the human spirit by engaging all of the senses. This notion was recently on display at their exhibit “Site & Senses” at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, and is reflected in a diverse range of projects including a restaurant in the SFMOMA, a 160,000-square-foot LEED Gold brewery in San Leandro, and Stanford University’s Windhover Contemplative Center, a non-denominational art chapel that serves as a refuge for students and faculty. Recent work includes projects as far away as Doha and Hong Kong, and as diverse as a high school in Santa Rosa, a cultural arts center in San Francisco, and several wineries that push the boundaries of sustainability in agriculture and building.
In recent years, the firm has garnered more than 180 regional, national, and international awards including Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Award for their body of work, two James Beard Awards, nine American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, two International Civic Trust Awards, and several regional and national awards from the AIA, IIDA, and ASLA.