David Darling, Aidlin Darling Design founder, will give a lecture titled “Making Sense” to the LSU College of Art & Design on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 5 p.m. in 103 Design Building Auditorium.

David Darling, FAIA, IIDA, ASLA

David Darling is a founding partner of Aidlin Darling Design, formed with Joshua Aidlin in 1997, with a shared interest in exploring design across a wide range of scales, programs, and disciplines including institutional, commercial and residential architecture, as well as furniture, landscape, interior, and product design. Founded on a closely held conviction that design can engage all of the senses, his work has pursued an interest in the connection between design, food, art, culture and place. Mr. Darling has augmented this multi-disciplined pursuit through teaching, through his involvement with the James Beard Foundation, Slow Food USA, AIA, IIDA, ASLA, and through his studio’s trans-disciplinary design work.

Recent work has included projects as far away as Doha, Qatar and Hong Kong. Completed projects include the restaurant In Situ at SFMOMA, the three-Michelin starred restaurant Benu in San Francisco, the Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford University, a 160,000 sq. ft. LEED Gold craft brewery in San Leandro, and several wineries that push the boundaries of sustainability in agriculture and architecture. Current work includes a Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia, and a waterfront pavilion for the new Expedia Headquarters in Seattle, Washington. In recent years, his firm has garnered over 250 regional, national, and international awards including two James Beard Awards for restaurant design, two Civic Trust Awards, and seven National AIA Awards. In 2013, the firm was bestowed a National Design Award from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum for the firm’s full body of work.

Aidlin Darling Design

As the world becomes increasingly dominated by the visual and virtual, we can take for granted how intertwined we are with the environment surrounding us. For over 23 years, Aidlin Darling Design has pursued an architecture of restraint that seeks to intervene and engage our senses, connecting us to place and to ourselves. Embracing architecture as an active bodily encounter, the firm strives to uncover the latent spirit of each project through rigorous site observation, intensive understanding of program, and protracted collaboration, ultimately resulting in a strong sense of permanence and timelessness.