People

Paul L. Whalen

FAIA

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Biography


Paul Whalen's planning and design projects are guided by a firm deep understanding of how architecture can strengthen neighborhoods and elevate everyday life.

Paul has demonstrated his ability to realize projects across a range of scales and architectural expression. His work clearly expresses the value of classical principles in the establishment of human scale, and is always attentive to regional character and appropriate to climate and culture. By applying time-tested principles in unexpected ways, Paul participates in a tradition of architecture that is very much alive.

As a partner, Paul has led some of the firm's most prominent  planning and multifamily residential projects, including the new town of Celebration, Florida, and Heart of Lake, a new model for neighborhood development in China that combines lessons from traditional local villages and American urban planning. He has helped reshape New York City with his work on the revitalization of the theater block of New York's 42nd Street, and as leader of the design team for 15 Central Park West, the incredibly influential high-end multifamily building that reset the market for high-end residential development in Manhattan. Currently, Paul is engaging in the design of a new generation of New York apartment houses as well a family of new residential buildings in Lima, Peru.

Paul has lectured on topics as diverse as high-rise urbanism, 19th-century Scottish country houses, and potential ways to redevelop Havana's industrial waterfront. He is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sir John Soane's Museum Foundation in New York, which organizes lectures, travel, and educational events in support of the museum in London; he also serves on the Board of the New York Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism and is active in the Urban Land Institute and the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.