Did You Know?
The Blue Ridge Parkway travels through 29 counties in North Carolina and Virginia. Photo by Vicki Dameron
David Hill
New Perspectives: Neighbor's Guide to the Blue Ridge Parkway
David P. Hill, ASLA
President
Hill Studio
Virginia native David Hill formed Hill Studio in 1988. This multi-disciplinary firm in Roanoke attempts to combine research with practice. Nowhere is this more evident than in their work with the Blue Ridge Parkway. Since 1982, when David first interned for the National Park Service, there has been a lifetime commitment to serve and learn from America’s most-visited National Park. The most visible work includes the traveling exhibition The Blue Ridge Parkway. This Critical Analysis of the Parkway’s Design and Construction was first commissioned by Harvard University, shown in 1990 at The National Building Museum, Washington, DC, and later toured the United States. Other milestones have included the Last Chance Landscape Designs and the master plan and site design for the new Blue Ridge Music Center.
David has served as an adjunct faculty member at Roanoke College and Virginia Tech. His seminars include Evolution of the American Land, and Human Values and Appalachian Land Use.
Presentation
Neighbor’s Guide to the Blue Ridge Parkway
The Blue Ridge Parkway rides the highest elevations of the Blue Ridge. Its unusual shape for a national park – 472 miles long by an average of ¼-mile wide – has provided a history of experimental land management techniques to seamlessly blend the Parkway with the horizon. Seventy-five years after its inception, the landscape architects’ original vision to host the visitor through borrowed scenery can be enhanced and better secured. The Neighbor’s Guide to the Blue Ridge Parkway is an illustrated set of design guidelines for site development and construction to enhance and preserve this American Heritage Road. This presentation will discuss the history of blending the Parkway seamlessly to the horizon, including these new guidelines.
