David Wilson, AIA

David Wilson, AIA

No matter the scale or type of project, David Wilson, AIA, leverages design to ensure architecture remains a source of good in the world. His socially responsible designs have touched all aspects of the built environment, from residential architecture to his more recent focus on serving a wide range of cultural and educational communities across the country. Addressing the needs of the communities he serves, now and in the future, stands at the core of his wide-ranging talents.

Wilson is a project designer for HGA in the firm’s Minneapolis office, where he has been instrumental in the success of projects that include the new music rehearsal building for the venerable Marlboro Music program in Marlboro, Vermont. The world-class musicians who use the program’s rehearsal spaces have lauded their acoustics and sensitive connection to the surrounding natural context. Further west, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Wilson provided design and technical leadership for the city’s new Historical Society and Museum, currently under construction.

Wilson’s concern for the environment began when he was a teenager and viewed a documentary that explored how much waste a typical American creates in their first year of life. That concern has followed him throughout his young career, and in a firm of nearly 1,000 employees, he was appointed to its National Sustainability Council. He is also the Minneapolis arts, community, and education sustainability leader, setting the firm’s benchmarks and closely considering its internal practices on sustainable design. In 2021, he received a $12,000 Ralph Rapson Traveling Study Award from the Minnesota Architectural Foundation and used it to explore the connections between nature and architecture in Japan.

Like much of the country, Wilson was deeply affected by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020, which caused him to reflect on the systemic racism and inherent biases ingrained in his community. As a small first step to address inequity in the profession, he volunteered with HGA’s National Racial Equity Task Force. As part of a small, diverse focus group within the firm, he helped explore what an equitable design process at HGA could look like. Wilson and the task force presented their findings to firm leadership, offering a series of long- and short-term recommendations that included an equity retrospective and expanding firm-wide racial equity training.

Wilson is an active AIA member, having held numerous leadership roles for AIA Minneapolis/St. Paul and AIA Minnesota. He also regularly volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and Hearts and Hammers, which both construct or repair homes for those who need them most.