HILLWORKS
HILLWORKS, Emily Knox | Alabama Meadows Research Plots, Mary Olive Thomas Demonstration Forest at Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 2020 to present. Image courtesy Emily Knox and David Hill
The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices program spotlights North American architects, landscape architects, and urban designers who have significant bodies of realized work and the potential to influence their field.
David Hill of HILLWORKS won a 2024 award.
David Hill founded the landscape design studio HILLWORKS in 2009. Located in Auburn, Alabama and working closely with Auburn University, a public land grant institution, the firm is grounded in the ecological and cultural landscape of the southeastern United States. HILLWORKS engages in design research on plant performance, including studies in phenology and novel ecologies, and the inventive reuse of land, such as community gardens and rewilding strategies. The studio’s projects across a variety of scales reflect a dedication to the regenerative power of the landscape.
Projects include:
- Alabama Meadows Research, an evolving conservation effort to restore the once expansive, ecologically diverse meadow landscape at the Auburn University.
- Dekalb County E-911 Facility, in collaboration with Chambless King Architects, a 16-acre property surrounding a call center designed and planted to minimize maintenance and maximize ecological diversity
- Congregation Or Hadash Synagogue, in collaboration with BLDGS, an adaptive reuse of a concrete auto-repair site to create an multifunctional synagogue space with permeable surfaces
HILLWORKS won the 2022 Honor Award in Research, National ASLA for the Alabama Meadows Research Plots. The practice was profiled in Landscape Architecture Magazine in 2023.
David Hill is the Graduate Program Chair and Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at Auburn University. He holds an master’s of landscape architecture and a master’s of architecture from the University of Virginia.
