Field Paoli

Shopping was born in Paris. It was the grand-child of two revolutions: the first was the overthrow of Louis XVI and t...

Building on two recent collaborations for both San José State University Campus Master Plan and San José Evergreen Community College District Facil...

Images: on the left “Broadway”, 1947, by Todd Webb. On the right, muralist Jenny Phillips at work.On my morning ride to work today while cycling p...

On the left, a drawing of hippocampal cells by Ramon y Cajal, one of the founding fathers of neuroscience; on the right, the cellular city - a deta...

The city is like a great house, and the house in its turn a small city.Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of building in Ten Books (mid- 15th Centur...

Two more Ramon Y Cajal drawings: on the left, a Study of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex in which Cajal proposes the directional flow of inf...

Be curious, be generous, go beyond, be a team, and seek balance – this year at Field Paoli Architects, we stayed true to our values as we took on n...

The annual AIA conference happens every June and this year we were lucky that it took place in our hometown of San Francisco.We hosted an exuberant...

Field Paoli’s 20th New Whole Foods Opens at Stonestown Galleria For nearly 40 years we have been designing public spaces that evoke wonder and insp...

We are pleased to announce that Rob has been elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.Over the past 3...

Towards a more experiential approach to mall redevelopment“We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors.”Ralph Waldo Emerson, "...

Architecture is a way of seeing things. That’s why digital visualization tools have been so impactful: not because they moved us from paper to the ...

Shoppers enjoying a leisurely stroll at Broadway Plaza, Walnut Creek, CA. Textures, landscaping, generous sidewalks and storefront displays all hav...

The first of an occasional series of posts on the relationship between evolutionary biology, neuroscience, behavioral economics and the art of plac...

"Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music."— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Oculus, Santiago Calatrava's vast ribbed structure ...

The 39 – yes, 39 – municipal food markets of Barcelona provide a wide variety of visual, auditory, and olfactory experiences. The most popular...

By Katherine Blanner Understanding your customer has always been the bread-and-butter of the grocery business. Historically, as grocery markets ex...

Experiential urban design shapes how our urban environment is perceived and experienced. Its emergence and evolution as an approach to design can b...

Walk into a store, or a hotel, or a home. What do you smell? That first whiff of a space characterizes it in ways that don’t always reach our consc...

Trends in airport retail, social messaging in the built environment, and inclusion design... these are just some of the topics principal Christen S...

Like you, we’re passionate about craft beer. The small brewery movement has injected energy into the social scene in California and beyond. People ...

Dining at the airport used to be the stuff of late-night TV jokes and fast-food nightmares. But tightened security check-points combined with incre...

Bill Gates said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ...

Borough Market is a must-visit destination in London. Located in a dramatic setting under three intersecting railway viaducts, Borough has become a...

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter... a soothing, calming influence on ...

Winston Churchill, recently brought back to life by John Lithgow in The Crown and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour, was a master orator who left us with...

Thomas Heatherwick’s Kissing Roofs at the Kings Cross Coal Drops YardThomas Heatherwick is the latest high profile designer to apply his creative s...

RH New York: a baby boomer in millenial's clothing?There is no better place than New York City to experience the latest brick and mortar store conc...

We are pleased to announce that Forum Cuernavaca was the recipient of a 2018 ICSC Caribbean and Latin America Design Award.Located an hour South of...

In a time of great change and great competitiveness, where breaking the rules of the status quo is a necessary survival strategy, it’s refreshing t...

In development circles, mixed-use development is often maligned as “mixed-up use,” or, more generously, “shared-use.” This is because mixed-use des...

In a country with a magnificent history of material manipulation—the buttery marble under the arm of Michelangelo’s pieta, the Roman invention of c...

A two-and-a-half-hour drive from Mexico City, Cuernavaca is a mountainous, resort-like destination for domestic and international travelers, famous...

Let’s take a walk and grab a beer. San Jose’s newest Whole Foods Market includes the company’s first in-store microbrewery and tap room in Cal...

There’s something compelling about physically making things. Most people know by now that the maker movement is a progression toward creativity and...

John Field, FAIA, founded our firm in 1986. Over the course of his long career, he’s drawn on his deep knowledge of the spatial character of older ...

Rob Anderson teams up with Merrill Companies' Fred Merrill on an article featured in Urban Land Magazine. Prairiefire is a unique mixed-use pr...

When you’re in high school, unless you know an architect, you probably don’t know much about what architects do. Or engineers, or contractors, for ...

While main street retail is almost always carefully designed and managed, on-campus retail has often been an afterthought. With academic institutio...

Ghirardelli opened a new ice cream and chocolate shop in Las Vegas in May last year. Across from Caesars Palace, it’s part of the ne...

Berkeley Design Advocates, a volunteer group of architects and urban planners, selected 11 buildings and projects for recognition in this year's aw...

Greetings from Miami Beach and the 2014 International Retail Design Conference (IRDC) where the scenery, speakers and food were extraordi...

On October 9, Field Paoli is having a party: the theme is “Food, People, Art.” For the art part, we invited artists who work here (and some of clos...

The new South Branch Library in Berkeley opened a year ago last May, after four long years of programming, design, demolition, and rebuilding. Its ...

We recently celebrated the opening of our 10th new Whole Foods Market in Northern California and wanted to share some highlights with you...

Or one way of creating a memorable streetscape!The New York Times recently featured the work of Natan Dvir, whose streetscapes photo...

A palette of sustainably-harvested — and some living — materials showcases a range of toxin-free, natural, and organic products.Always looking for ...

This photo by John Humble of a store in LA’s Boyle Heights neighborhood made me question my previous comments about t...

This photo of an intersection in Kolkata, India, recently published in the New York Times Magazine,  reminded me of the impact of re...

San Francisco Planning and Urban Research recently hosted a lively presentation and panel about urban farming in the Bay Area and beyond.&nbsp...

One of my favorite Matisse paintings has always been his “interior with violin”.  Sure, there’s a lot of black in that painting, but the black...

Urban grocery stores are becoming more popular as anchors, not only for mixed-use centers but also for entire communities. Many of the biggest stor...

Consumers want them. Cities want them. Developers want them. Why are urban groceries so hot?For one thing, the economic downturn has wiped out...

Whatever the state of the economy, but especially when times are hard, our primal need for food turns into a search for comfort and delight.  ...