As a new resident of the Ocean Beach community in the 70’s, Quigley helped create and then served on San Diego’s first community planning board. Rob later established his office in Little Italy and worked with local grass root activists around his conference table in the evenings to create the Little Italy Focus Plan. The document was the first of its type downtown and has guided the remarkable redevelopment of Little Italy to this day. Along with a group of passionate community activists, Rob helped stop a bay view blocking overhead trolley championed by powerful political interests. He later participated as a member of the Downtown Plan Update committee, serving as chairman of the Urban Design Subcommittee. His influence ranged from broad issues such as strengthening neighborhood identity and defining sun envelopes that protect public parks to details such as masking unsightly glare from parking garage entrances.
Long concerned that the Redevelopment Agencies practice of consolidating entire city blocks for a single developer was ruining the pedestrian scale of downtown and inhibiting social diversity, Rob teamed up with a team of architects and developers to create the ground breaking LIND project. After winning the full block RFP, the team then re-subdivided the block to enable multiple fine grain projects by the different architects surrounding an un-gated interior courtyard. Rob has dedicated more than two decades to academic campus planning. He chaired the UCSD Design Review Board and served on the UCR Design Review Board evaluating proposed planning documents and building designs. He worked to improve the quality of architecture on campus and also to improve the architect selection process itself. Rob was also instrumental in helping to establish the UCSD Department of Architecture and was honored to be the short lived school’s first adjunct professor. More recently, his efforts were critical in convincing San Diegans to defeat a well financed proposed downtown NFL stadium. This huge, unfortunately sited and inwardly focused facility would have irreparably harmed the neighborhood quality and view amenities of East Village and further divorced downtown from the Bay. Quigley was amused to be honored for his efforts as the 11th most powerful person in San Diego by Our City Magazine in 2017. Collaborative by nature, his studio has developed unique methods to authentically engage both client and user in the creative process. He is skilled at extracting emotion and meaning from both the community and the place, as well as leveraging both challenging budgets and difficult political situations. One of the early pioneers of contemporary sustainable design, Quigley considers climate responsibility a gateway to a more sensual and profound architecture. His first solar houses were built in the late 70’s and his West Valley Library was the country’s first LEED certified library.