by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Wendy Hillis, AIA, was selected by the American Architectural Foundation and the French Heritage Society (formerly called Vieilles Maisons Francaises, Inc.) as the 2007 recipient of the Richard Morris Hunt Fellowship. Awarded alternately to French and American architects, the Hunt Fellowship provides $25,000 for a six-month immersion work/study program that enables architects to observe and practice the latest historic preservation techniques and visit sites of significance in the host country. Formerly a senior associate with Architectural Resources Group, Hillis opened her own practice in October 2005.

Education: I have a BA from University of California, Davis, and MArch from University of Virginia, with a certificate in historic preservation.

Current work: Although I graduated from UC, Davis, I actually went to UCLA for three years of my undergrad. Right now, I’m the architect for the renovation for my former sorority house at UCLA. This is a pretty sizeable job that’s been keeping me busy. I knew that I wanted to apply for the Hunt Fellowship and the timeframe for this construction project was good. It’ll be finishing up right when I leave.

Current read: I am currently reading Sarah Susanka’s new book, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters. It just came out, and I think it’s appropriate for where I am in my life. I have this great sabbatical for six months and I’m grappling with what to do when I come back. What kind of firm do I want to create, or what kind of firm do I want to work for? I was in the Bay Area for nine years and now I’m living near Sacramento, so where exactly do I want my life to be, and how big do I want it to be?

Working for myself over the last year and a half has been the biggest learning experience. I learned more working for myself than I could have in five years elsewhere, but there are also a lot of personal sacrifices that come with it because it becomes all-consuming. This sabbatical is very nice because it lets me take a breather and come back into my life six months later, fresh—with eyes wide open and able to make some real choices.

Interest in historic preservation: When I was applying to grad school, I only looked at programs that had historic preservation components. I seriously looked at Columbia’s program because they have an MS in preservation. You get two degrees actually: an MS in preservation and a degree in architecture. My undergraduate degree in art history was by default. I was interested in architecture, but the architecture history program was in the art history department, so I ended up with that as my major. Then, with art history as my undergraduate major, historic preservation seemed to make a lot of sense.

I’m very committed to anything that has withstood the test of time. It obviously has something intrinsically important and well designed about it. It’s not throwaway architecture, and that’s what I like about it. I feel like I’m reinvesting in something that has a past and a future. It isn’t going to be removed or demolished in five years. I briefly worked for a firm that did tenant improvements like retail. For my personality, it just didn’t work because I just knew that it was a short-lived installation.

Whose work inspires: Hector Guimar; he did all of the Metro stations in Paris. Also, a lot of the Art Nouveau architects like Gaudi. I also really like San Diego artist James Hubble. He does architectural installations and architectural features and has worked on a lot of different buildings there. It’s very similar to what you see in the Art Nouveau architects where it’s very organically shaped. It’s so antithetical to what I would design. I’m not a design architect and I’m not a designer. I am a very good project manager and technical architect. I look at these organically designed things and they’re gorgeous and I respond to that, yet I also recognize that it’s not something that I would do if I were designing. I simply don’t think in that way.

Applying for the Hunt Fellowship: I have wanted to do the Hunt Fellowship for years. I first learned about it six or seven years ago when Stephanie Celle, one of the French fellows, toured the office that I worked for in San Francisco. At some point, I became the contact person in my office for the program. Every other year, the French architects would visit and I would show them around while they were in San Francisco. I thought, “Wow, that’s great. I speak French.” I’ve always wanted to do this kind of study. It fits with so much of what I have done in my past, so it was on my radar.

[To be eligible for the fellowship], I had to be a licensed architect. That was my first hurdle. It took me six years to get licensed. I applied in 2005, the first year I was eligible, but didn’t get it. In the past few rounds, applying architects have had to interview twice to get it, so really 2005 was putting my hat in the ring and saying “I’m interested.”

Course of study in France: The interest of my research is Modern additions and infill to historic structures and historic districts, which is really a hot topic in preservation right now. Once a month, I will attend the Commission Superior, which is like an appeals court for French preservation projects that are contentious or that may not meet preservation standards. I’ll also visit the Ecole de Chaillot near Versailles. It’s their preservation school, and I’ll be there for a couple of days.

French preservation is a little different from American preservation in that it’s more of a centralized government program. In order to work on what they call their Class A monuments over there, you need to be an architecte en chef, which basically means “chief architect.” There are about 15 of them for the country. They have private firms but, after they pass an exam, they are allowed to work on the Class A historical monuments such as the very important cathedrals. I’ll spend between two and four weeks in their offices all over the country. Some of these architects are former Hunt Fellows to the U.S., and I will be shadowing them and looking at their projects and what they do.

They have some amazing projects. One of the architects that I’ll be working with is working on the Farnese Palace in Rome, because that’s a French-owned building. I’ll have the opportunity to work on buildings that are so much older and in some ways more important than anything I ever worked on in California.

Date of departure: Well, it was going to be June 1. My project is under construction in Los Angeles, so last week I made the decision to defer until August 17. I will be there from August until the end of February. I had hoped to be there during summer, but the French Heritage Society has been very understanding. It had been a discussion from the beginning because I knew my construction at UCLA wasn’t finishing up until the end of August, so it was wishful thinking on my part that I was going to be able to do it from afar.

On the Louvre pyramid and historic preservation: Every developer I’ve ever worked with who has an old building and wants to do something Modern has used the Louvre as their example, but the Louvre pyramid project was an exception in a lot of ways. It was a pet project of the president. It was a foreign architect who was allowed to work on this monument, which is rare. Usually, it’s only the architectes en chef who are allowed to work on those buildings. It was an extraordinary project in so many ways and therefore such an exception, but it really set the bar for what people look for in Modern interventions in historic sites. I think the French really pushed that envelope a bit more than we are willing to, which is ironic because their architecture is a lot older.

For me, it comes down to quality. For those developers who use the Louvre pyramid as their example, my response has been to tell them if they’re willing to spend the kind of money that the French spent for detailing and design and not value engineer everything out of it, then maybe we could talk. But they have to realize that there’s a level of quality and respect that went into that architecture. It wasn’t just putting up a bunch of glass and steel and saying it contrasts.

Architects and preservation: There’s all this talk right now about making green buildings and yet there’s not a discussion about the fact that so much of what gets built is temporary. I would love to see architects take a stronger stance on not designing throwaway architecture, not designing stuff that’s going to be pulled out in five years.