Becton Dickinson Campus Center
Introduction
Studio Hillier LLC is an interdisciplinary design firm in Princeton, NJ, co-founded in 2011 by partners Barbara A. Hillier, AIA, and J. Robert Hillier, LHD, FAIA, PP. For over thirty years, we have formed the backbone of a vibrant, growing full-service architectural studio with the depth of experience and design talent to take on a challenge of any scope.
We work collaboratively with experts in the region and elsewhere who bring excellence and robust knowledge of the latest building technologies, including prefabrication and environmental systems and the preservation of historic structures. Our success is reflected in the number of repeat clients who recognize our rigorous performance standards in meeting occupancy dates, managing the budget, and delivering high-quality design and professional services. With over three hundred and fifty design awards, our reputation for excellence is evidence of our commitment to our clients, place, sustainability, and the built environment.
Over the last two decades, a representation of completed project types includes hospitals, international corporate headquarters, public and private libraries, a US government courthouse, an urban convention center, independent day and boarding secondary schools, colleges and universities, art centers/museums, research buildings, and multi-family projects. Our work is a mosaic of places, cultures, customs, and economies in locations ranging from bucolic open spaces to urban neighborhoods to densely urban communities. Through these projects, we work tirelessly to achieve our clients’ expectations and create architecture that embodies the vision and spirit of their dreams.
Studio Hillier’s office is located in the heart of the historic Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood in Princeton, New Jersey, and operates out of a converted machine shop and warehouse. We serve clients throughout New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York, Connecticut, Washington, DC, Beijing, and Shanghai from our Princeton base. We are only one hour from 2 international airports. We have projects in 27 states and 32 countries.
The following projects have been completed during Bob and Barbara’s careers, selected from their personal scrapbook, which spans 55 years of Hillier architecture.
Becton Dickinson Campus Center
J. Robert Hillier, LHD, FAIA MANAGING PRINCIPAL
J. Robert Hillier (Bob) is one of the leading and most highly-respected architects in the United States. Best known for building one of the world’s largest and most successful architecture firms, Mr. Hillier is distinguished for his design, business acumen, and contributions to the profession as both a practitioner and educator.
Bob and the firm have been widely published in national and international journals, newspapers, and magazines. He has given over 200 lectures and participated in dozens of design juries. In 1992, Bob joined the core faculty of Princeton University’s School of Architecture, where he currently teaches two graduate seminars. He has served on the AIA National Fellowship Jury and as Chair of the Selection Committee for the Dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture. He is also a Trustee Emeritus at McCarter Theater.
More recently, Bob received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and an Honorary MBA from Bryant University. Other honors include the Legacy Award from the Urban Land Institute, the New Jersey AIA’s Michael Graves Lifetime Achievement Award, and the President’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement from NJIT. In May 2019, the New Jersey Institute of Technology renamed its Architecture/Design school the J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier College of Architecture and Design.
REGISTRATIONS
NJ #21AI00438500, CT, D.C., DE, FL, GA, KS, MD, MA, NH, NY, PA, RI, TX, VA, Washington D.C.
EDUCATION
MFA, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
BA, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
AFFILIATIONS
Member, College of Fellows, American Institute of Architects
Core Faculty, Princeton University School of Architecture, 1992 to Present
Board of Advisors, Architectural Graphics Standards Publication
New Jersey Green Building Council, Founding Member
Selected Corporate Clients
Accenture
ACE USA, Inc.
American Home Products
AT&T
Becton Dickinson
Bell Atlantic Corporation
Campbell Soup Company
Capital One
Chase Manhattan Bank
Citicorp
Deloitte & Touche
ETS
Ernst & Young
Federal Express
Firmenich, Inc
General Foods
Glaxo Smith Kline
Goldman Sachs
Herman Miller
Hilton International
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
IBM Corporation
Johnson & Johnson
LG Electronics
Lucent Technologies
LVMH
Merrill Lynch
Motorola
Novartis
PNC Bank
Prudential Insurance
Ritz-Carlton
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Rohm and Haas
Salomon Smith Barney
Samsung Corporation
Sanofi-Aventis
Schering-Plough
StarMedia
Steelcase
Siemens
Sprint
Tiffany & Co.
Towers Perrin
Turkiye Is Bankasi AS
The Vanguard Group
Urban Trifecta
PRINCETON, NJ
10,000 SF
Studio Hillier identified an opportunity to transform a warehouse/ garage on Witherspoon Street in downtown Princeton into a storefront architectural studio. The studio is flanked on either side by a residentialturned-commercial property that was also in need of revitalization. Studio Hillier sought to further enhance the surrounding neighborhood and community by restoring life to the buildings and the street.
The comprehensive plan to integrate retail, residential, and office space was developed through several meetings with the Witherspoon-Jackson Community. By engaging with residents and community leaders from the beginning of the design process, valuable and helpful information was offered and incorporated into the design.
In addition to the 6,600-square-foot warehouse transformed into an architectural studio, the two adjacent properties were renovated into 2,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor and 2,000 square feet of residential space above. Four apartment units were created, two meeting the affordable housing requirements.
Synygy World Headquarters
CHESTER, PA
130,000 SF
Synygy selected Hillier to transform a massive industrial-age power station into Synygy’s new world headquarters. The award-winning project helped the company set the benchmark for industry leadership, corporate responsibility, and community involvement.
Named the “Best Adaptive Reuse Project of the Year” in 2006 by the International Design Association, Philadelphia City Center Chapter, Hillier’s transformation of the aging power station was also honored by the Philadelphia Preservation Alliance and received the 2006 Commonwealth Design Award from 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania.
The original power station was a monument to the production and marketing of electricity in the early 20th century, featuring advances in power generation and industrial construction. Accommodating modern technology and enabling a design that would facilitate future growth first required removing much of the equipment from the past.
The Turbine Hall, with its 100-foot vaulted ceiling, now incorporates a data center, cafeteria, and conference center housed within two new freestanding structures, whose roofs serve as a plaza, an open patio, and a multi-functional theater/trade show area. Some equipment, however, was preserved; the old power station’s control room was preserved as the executive conference room.
AWARDS
AIA Pennsylvania Recognition Award
Building Design and Construction Grand Award for Reconstruction
International Interior Design Association Interior Design Award
10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth Design Awards Silver Award
Philadelphia Preservation Alliance Preservation Achievement Award
PUBLICATIONS
Construction Today “Four Decades of Design”
Synygy World Headquarters Chester, PA
Becton Dickinson Campus Center
FRANKLIN LAKES, NJ
35,000 SF
The chosen site for the campus center on the Becton Dickinson corporate campus was the main ceremonial lawn framed by the two massive masonry office buildings. The CEO imagined a new campus center as the virtual knot that would join the two stand-alone office buildings and unify the campus’s executive management and technical staff, becoming the symbol of a new, unified collaborative workforce. The campus center facility bridges and blurs the boundaries between building/landscape, indoor/outdoor, roof/earth, and the two local business cultures of management/production.
Sustainable design was elemental in the campus center’s plan, which features a vegetative roof, and the site design. The reconstituted lawn reduces storm water run-off, minimizes below-grade structures and piping, and eliminates heat islands.
AWARDS
The Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award
AIA New Jersey Merit Award
AIA Pennsylvania Excellence Award
American Concrete Institute NJ Grand Award
PUBLICATIONS
Metropolis Magazine “Garden State”
Becton Dickison Campus Center Franklin Lakes, NJ
LVMH North American HQ
NEW YORK, NY
106,000 SF
Hillier collaborated with Christian de Portzamparc, a Pritzker Prizewinning architect, on this twenty-four-story skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Portzamparc provided the building design, and Hillier served as the coordinating architect, providing design development, production documentation, construction administration services, and interior architecture and design.
Peter Marino designed a ground-level store for Christian Dior. The white-glass-mirrored tower, with a striking oblique line, is as dramatic as the fashion companies housed within its walls. The innovative structure incorporates intelligent building technologies, including fully integrated data and telecommunications systems.
Inside the tower are offices for executives at Guerlain, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and several other divisions of the luxury goods conglomerate. The offices are complemented by nine showrooms and a thirty-foothigh Magic Room on the top floor—a multipurpose room for special events, including fashion shows, product launches, and large meetings.
AWARDS
AIA New Jersey
Merit Award
BIM Award Citation
Business Week/Architectural Record
Excellence Award
Dupont Antron Design Award
Merit Winner, Retail Category, Showroom Spaces
K. Hovnanian RED BANK, NJ
65,000 SF
K. Hovnanian Companies built a 65,200-square-foot world headquarters in Red Bank, New Jersey, as the new home for its managing executives. Hovnanian, a public home-building company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, is currently the eighth-largest home builder in the U.S.
The headquarters houses real estate, accounting, legal and architectural executives. Three floors of offices and the parking levels located beneath them are arranged around a central skylight, utilizing structural glass in the atrium floor and pedestrian bridges to transmit daylight to the lower parking levels.
The 1.5-acre site is located along the Navesink River in downtown Red Bank. The central entry plaza along Front and Riverside Streets features a public plaza and an extensive fountain system.
The building facade along these streets is articulated to complement the downtown area’s scale and traditional architectural vocabulary. When viewed from the river, the building presents a transparent expression of a glass curtain wall. The glass curtain wall and balconies from the building offer expansive waterfront views.
GlaxoSmithKline Global HQ
Hillier’s design for a global headquarters for GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical companies, initiated a transformation within the organization and introduced a significant presence on a prominent thirteen-acre site outside of Central London at the intersection of the A4 and M4 highways.
The building was designed to bring employees together in an efficient and effective work environment and to create a central space that advances GSK culture, which includes executive visibility and staff interaction. It also creates a gateway landmark that is welcoming to visitors and sensitive to the surrounding neighborhood. The project also made the most of the construction budget by accelerating the design and construction process.
The headquarters for up to 3,500 people encompasses over one million square feet of space within three five-story buildings and a sixteenstory, seventy-one-meter-high glass tower. A dramatic, double-curving façade of glass and natural stone fenestration links the structures. There is also a 142-meter-long interior “street,” a focal point enlivened by interconnecting bridges suspended from top-level trusses that provide continuous vistas.
Vanguard Training Center
MALVERN, PA 120,000 SF
The Vanguard Group, an organization committed to employee preparedness and superior customer service, wanted an on-site conference and training center at its Malvern Headquarters Campus. In response, the architects designed a facility capable of housing the latest technological advances and equipped to host large groups of people. The 120,000-square-foot, two-story building, is uniquely suited to public gatherings and employee learning.
The conference and training center is the home to Vanguard University, the financial giant’s employee education program. More than 600 employees each day are involved in training. The conference and training center employs an extensive array of technology systems in its 35 classrooms and several large multi-purpose rooms.
The team wanted to celebrate the unique function of the building by designing a structure of distinction. Still, they also wanted to integrate the building into the built and natural environment of the campus. Their solution is a two-story, 120,000-square-foot structure that uses material palettes compatible with, but not identical to, the other buildings on the campus.
AWARDS
