John Field — S.F. architect focused on retail spaces
John Field, an architect and self-described “urban choreographer” who strove to humanize shopping centers in the Bay Area and elsewhere, died of cancer at his home in San Francisco on Feb. 21. He was 87.
Rather than reshape the skyline, Mr. Field won notice in his profession by focusing on mostly suburban shopping centers — trying to turn staid lines of functional shops into community hubs. His pedestrian-friendly updates a generation ago to such complexes as Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto and Broadway Plaza in Walnut Creek spawned imitations across the nation, including his firm’s Paseo Nuevo in Santa Barbara.
At the same time, Mr. Field cared passionately about the city that he called home for 60 years. In his early career, he helped reconceive at least one decrepit warehouse in Jackson Square. In the mid-’90s, his firm brought new life to 1000 Van Ness, a former Cadillac dealership converted into a mix of movie theaters, restaurant space and housing.
Whatever the setting, Mr. Field’s gift was that he understood that individual works of architecture are part of a larger civic fabric.
“John taught all of us to think about the places between buildings,” said Rob Anderson, a principal at Field Paoli, the firm founded in 1986 by Mr. Field and David Paoli. “He’d tell us that what we do isn’t about precious objects. It’s about the things that happen around them.”
Born in Minnesota, Mr. Field earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture at Yale University, then “got in the car and drove as far as I could drive,” he told an interviewer in 2005. In San Francisco, he was hired by the local office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
He opened his own firm in 1959; his first job was a home for friends. But in 1965, Mr. Field joined with three peers to form Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell. “One day over lunch, we realized that every client interviewed all four of us,” he said in 2005, the year after officially retiring from Field Paoli. “So we got together.”
Retail became Mr. Field’s forte as the firm expanded. Increasingly, he sought to conjure up some of the atmosphere of the small cities that he and his wife, Carol, would visit in Italy, where the pleasure of wandering structure-lined byways was an attraction in itself.
“John was about the ideas — ‘I want to see more romance, I want more energy,’ ” recalled Mark Schatz, who worked for Mr. Field at Bull Field Volkmann Stockwell and then Field Paoli. “He inspired us through his thinking rather than his sketching.”
This was true outside the office as well: He made two films about urban life and served on the boards of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, which runs the farmers’ markets at the Ferry Building and in Oakland’s Jack London Square. He also spent several years on the design review board of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
Mr. Field is survived by his wife, Carol, a novelist and cookbook author; his son, Matt, of San Francisco and daughter Alison of Chestnut Hill, Mass.; and three grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned. Donations in his memory can be made to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and San Francisco Ballet.