2025 Robert Mosher Lifetime Achievement Award
Paul Buss is the rare architect who also is a developer. Successfully wearing both hats, his working lifetime has been spent towards the betterment of the built environment across the US and especially in San Diego. Keenly interested in “making special places happen,” as he eloquently puts it, Paul was a driving force behind one of the first mixed-use developments in the country--among many other notable achievements.
Born in Kansas and educated in architecture at Iowa State at the height of the Vietnam War, through his service in the Navy he arrived on the West Coast at Camp Pendleton and worked on housing projects there. In 1972 he began a long career in design working for Robert Ferris. Four years later, Paul established Buss Silver Hughes Architects, later BSHA, where he did what he considers “some of my best architectural work.”
After turning the firm over to an up-and-coming associate, Gordon Carrier, he began to shift his perspective towards development. His portfolio while at Oliver McMillan’s office included a dozen buildings in the University Town Center area, built in the 1970’s and 80’s. It was always his intent to raise the design bar for local development. The Uptown Center redevelopment of an abandoned Sears site became a national model for responsible, highly livable urban development. Paul’s successes led to a substantial list of additional projects, in places ranging from Culver City to Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Honolulu and beyond. He believes developers could—and should—make places that are different and special.
His advocacy for a better public realm included service as President of AIA/San Diego and of the San Diego Architectural Foundation. It was Paul Buss who was responsible for bringing Ian McHarg and Alan Jacobs to San Diego in 1984 as a follow-up to Temporary Paradise? He was for many years a central figure in discussions about the development of San Diego and the region.
For his many contributions to architecture through a serendipitous marriage of design and development, Paul Buss is a most worthy recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.
