Three-time Auburn Alum Has Designed Vast Career

“I was always told, ‘If you don’t do well in design, you won’t do well overall,” reflected Huffman, who serves as Senior Principal/Vice President at WSP. He was recently named a Technical Fellow—WSP’s highest honor—in acknowledgement of his commitment to technical excellence and has been recognized with numerous landscape architecture and planning awards during his four-decade career.

“I spent five years in design studios,” he said. “I gained valuable skills but also learned that there’s no substitute for good design. When I think about clients I’ve worked with for decades, I believe they keep coming back because they value creativity. Handcrafted drawings are still the basis of so much of what I do today.”

The Atlanta Games

Huffman, who went on to earn two master’s degrees in History and Community Planning following his BLA, has drawn out one impressive career—one that includes a state park project of Olympic proportions.

“One of the highlights was designing Georgia’s first new state park in nearly 40 or 50 years,” he recalled. “It was built around Tallulah Gorge—3000 acres up there—and our team was hired to design the park, including the new visitors center, trails and more.”

That project introduced Huffman to then governor Zell Miller, who wanted the project completed in anticipation of the 1996 Olympics.

“Announced in 1991, the Olympics changed everything for Atlanta’s design industry,” he said. “Firms in town had been dealing with a recession, but almost overnight, it seemed like everybody had work.”

Huffman also contributed to Olympics-related work for Stone Mountain Park, which hosted five venues.

“We needed to accommodate spaces for archery, velodrome cycling, tennis and more,” he said. “As a planner, I also worked on neighborhood impact studies for the new stadiums. The Olympics are one of the ultimate international events, and it was a thrill to be a part of it. Just amazing.”

For Freedom

One of Huffman’s current projects that fills him with pride is his work on the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Alabama. This monument is slated to include an artistic representation of the bus that carried civil rights activists and was later burned.

“Talking to freedom riders and their descendants, they stressed the importance of people experiencing the bus,” he said. “The plan is for visitors to walk through a sculptural frame of the bus, down the center aisle, and stand where the freedom riders once stood. Each seat will feature the name of a freedom rider.”

In addition, the monument will include a memorial plaza dedicated to all the freedom riders.

“We’re also designing an artistic wall—about 275 feet long and 12 feet tall—that will serve as an expression celebrating the freedom rides. It’s a very important project.”

More than Trees

The value of landscape architecture as a discipline is vast, though, to Huffman’s admitted frustration, some still can’t see beyond the trees.

“It’s the greatest profession in the world, where you’re designing spaces for people,” he said. “We believe in the public good. I was an architect-planner in Afghanistan, helping rebuild the country. Many people I spoke to asked me if I was planting trees. Landscape architecture isn’t just about trees. We are master planners, designing everything from college campuses and public parks to communities, military bases, airfields and much more. Yes, we can enhance spaces with landscape, but our true value is in planning everything outside the walls of a building—roads, streets, campgrounds. It’s parks, cities, plazas and so much more. That’s the kind of contribution we make.”

Now celebrating 40 years of Landscape Architecture at Auburn, spanning both the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and the Master of Landscape Architecture programs, Huffman is impressed by the university’s contribution.

“I respect Auburn so much for how they take kids straight out of high school—kids who have a passion for drawing but probably little knowledge of design—and, five years later, they turn them into designers,” he said. “That’s a really difficult thing to do. I still love looking at a blank piece of paper, then seeing it a week later, completely filled with whatever I’ve designed. Auburn shares that love with students. You can see the faculty’s passion still shining after 40 years when I visit with them. It’s great to see.”