Team led by Caroline Hill wins “Merit of Distinction”

Date of Release: 04/15/2006

SAN MARCOS—A design team led by Caroline Hill, an assistant professor of interior design in the Department of Family and Consumer Science at Texas State University-San Marcos, has won the “Merit of Distinction” award at the recent Interior Design Educator’s Council design competition in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Hill, working in cooperation with the Lauck Group out of Dallas, was the lead designer on the interior of the new Whole Foods corporate headquarters in Austin. A shell architect designed the exterior of the building, and Hill’s group completed the interior of the 120,000-square-foot project.

“One of the unique things about the project is that the headquarters was designed to earn LEED certification--that’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,” Hill explained. “That means it has a sustainable design and is highly energy efficient. It really is a ‘green’ building. People can go into Austin and see the actual work.

“It was a very large project for the team of us who worked on it,” Hill said. “It was stressful but rewarding. Whole Foods was a very pleasant client to work with.”

In total, there were 52 submissions to the Creative Scholarship Design Competition and only 10 of those submissions were invited to present at the conference. The competition jurors included representatives from international architectural firms Gensler and RTKL.