Kristina Hill

BS Tufts University;
MLA Harvard University;
Ph.D. Harvard University

Associate Professor and Director of Landscape Architecture

Kristina Hill joined the UVa faculty as an associate professor and director of the Program in Landscape Architecture in 2007. Her research studies innovations in urban water systems that address climate change adaptations as well as social justice. Kristina?s recent studios have addressed these issues in New York City and Baltimore. In 2008, she began working in New Orleans with a group of Dutch water engineers and local designers. Kristina has also established a productive research connection with urban designers and engineers in Hamburg, one of the largest port cities in Europe, to share strategies for adapting to climate change. Her current writing is on the connections between urban design, infrastructure design, and water systems as social and ecological drivers.

Before coming to U.Va., Hill was an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington, where her primary research interest was urban ecological design. Her book on the subject, Water, Ecology and the Design of Cities: Landscape Urbanism in the Pacific Northwest, will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2009. Hill co-edited the book Ecology and Design: A Framework for Learning published by Island Press in 2002, and has authored a number of articles on the use of ecological theory in urban design strategies, the role of design in mediating the effects of urbanization on aquatic systems, and strategies for adapting American cities to climate change, particularly in the area of infrastructure investments and coastal ecosystems.

At the University of Washington, she spent several years developing and implementing a new initiative in doctoral education on the subject of urban ecology. As one of few scholars with advanced training in both ecology and design, Hill has brought depth and rigor to the synthesis of these two disciplines.

In addition to her academic service, Hill has engaged in public service as a consultant for numerous public design projects in Seattle; Washington, D.C; Dallas, Texas; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Brandenburg, Germany.

Hill holds a master?s degree and a Ph.D. in landscape architecture from Harvard University. She earned a bachelor?s degree in geology from Tufts University. Hill was a Fulbright Scholar in 1990 and was appointed a Fellow of the Urban Design Institute in 2003. She was named an Honorary Fellow of the new Institute for Green Professionals (IGP) in 2008.