top of page
AARON HINISH
sculptor, managing partner
Aaron is the founding Principal of HINISH Design Collective, with over 15 years of collective experience ranging from prestigious land planning firms to design/build start ups. His work has taken him to nearly every region of the United States, cultivating a unique understanding of outdoor living and ecology. For the first 5 years after founding HINISH Design Collective, Aaron cultivated the gardens you see on this site with his two hands, bestowing a deep understanding of how to manipulate earth's surface and blend the built world into the natural. He'll be happy to discuss the days when him and his wife chiseled stone walls for 3 months with a 9 month old baby strapped on their back.
At this point in Aaron's career, he pushes to operate more so as an artist rather than strictly a designer or builder, valuing the ability to push outside the norm and see his projects through construction. In 2023, after years of hearing about terrible experiences with contractors and feeling stuck bidding out his own work, he felt a need to set a precedent of putting the client's needs first and switched to an open book method for executing construction. This has been a revolutionary shift in the ability to reduce overall risk and in turn cost, while providing full transparency around material & labor costs as well as profits, thus retaining trust from the client, always coming in on budget and occasionally under cost. This technique has not only allowed his commissions to be competitively priced, but typically 20% - 30% lesser in cost than comparable firms of similar quality.
At his core, Aaron is an artist looking to leave his mark on the world. Whether its through the relationships he builds or the gardens he builds, his driving purpose to push through the capitalistic mentality by creating bodies of work that truly provide places of refuge, joy and wonder for those generations to come. We as landscape architects are the only people on Earth equipped with the unique understanding of ecology, architecture and human psychology. This knowledge endows us with the ability to preserve the human connection with nature in a society where commerce, politics and media are rapidly pushing the masses indoor. Whether it's understood or not, we as humans are a part of nature, a natural being, and we rely on a connection with earth to retain both our health and sanity. We as landscape architects may have one of the most important roles in society, even though few know of our existence. I hope one day to change that.
BS, Landscape Architecture 2016
West Virginia University
HADIZA HINISH
creative director, managing partner
“The currency of civilization is art.” Art exists to me in infinite forms,as the expression of our complexity, yet as the simple language we all can see to form understanding from. I found design speaking to me from a young age, in the black lines of interior plans my father doodled on countless surfaces, in the ease of exploration along the Mediterrenean as a curious teenager, or in the way culture shaped the attire, lifestlye and place across countries I grew up in. Design is connection, attention to detail, and I nurture the ability to dive in further, to learn the importance of the specific.
To me, being a designer is the most enriching experience because it means iteration, it means diving in, but it also means pulling back and reflecting. There are lessons to be learned from working that reflect back on the personal, and ultimately that is the goal, to curate spaces, objects and places down to the use on a personal level. For me, the desire to create gives me the desire to live.
BS, Landscape Architecture
West Virginia University
503.462.3889
bottom of page