Over and Over: Hilary Sample on Making Books, Crafting an Office, and Leading a Creative Life

Portrait by Michael Vahrenwald

By Julia Gamolina

Hilary Sample is an American architect, educator, and author. She is the co-founder of MOS Architects and is the IDC Professor of Housing Design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. In her conversation with Julia, Hilary talks about being intentional in crafting her practice to be the way it is and maintaining who she is throughout it all, advising those just starting their careers to spend time being creative.

JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?

HS: From a young age, drawings and the act of drawing was something that I like a lot; some vivid memories were with time spent with my grandmother - we would sit and draw what we call sections, with a blue ballpoint pen on small scraps of paper. We would draw single line apartment buildings and draw the lives of the people inside. She lived alone and had very little material things, her house was small and dark, and in some ways I guess this was an escape beyond the interior life of her house.

Architecture was a fascination from growing up in variety of houses - from a mobile home to a house that was literally a roof sitting on top of a garage and nothing in between [laughs]. Growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania, I was exposed to a rapidly changing place, with the decline of these large industrial complexes, not a lot of new building, historic structures that were mostly in disrepair, and being within driving distance to New York City. Layered on to this was that my mother was a nurse at Cornell Hospital in the 1960s, where she had also lived - it was hard to believe that anyone actually lived in a hospital. On my first trip into the city when I was a teenager, we rode the elevator up and she showed me the view! [laughs]. It was a pivotal moment for me bringing together health and housing. Looking back I can see that that connection has always been there.

Housing No. 8 (Laboratorio de Vivienda), Apan, Mexico. Photo: Jaime Navarro.

Porto Academy Summer School. Photo: MOS.

What did you learn about yourself in architecture school?

As an undergraduate in a five year architecture program, there were not many women, neither as students nor as teachers. But, the women that were there were incredibly strong. You had to be fierce to advance your work and ideas. I was told, and others were too, that in order to survive you have to act and talk like a man. That was not appealing to me in any way [laughs]. I had to figure out what I was going to do, to have the education and the career that I wanted, without changing who I was. By sheer willpower and working hard and intensely I got around that fact.

This entailed looking to a certain set of role models. Architecture then was still about the master figure. This wasn’t something I could relate easily to, so I tried to find other models and examples, which is still an issue today on a construction site. It’s funny to sit and talk to you at The Wing, in this neighborhood, because my undergraduate thesis project was about New York City and the history of working women and housing. I studied Ladies Miles and at that time the Barbizon Hotel was in the process of changing. I proposed housing and also education - in a space like this - for my thesis project. At the time, people were surprised and said, “The issue of women is not a thesis project.” In the end it was well received and I had support through my critics, Marleen Davis, Ted Brown, and Margaret Griffin, who I am still in touch with today. 

Did you take time off before graduate school?

Graduate school happened about six years after working and volunteering. The economy was quite weak when I first graduated, and while I worked at a number office of different sizes and gained experience, I also freelanced to save up for grad school. I also volunteered at a range of places, from Storefront for Art and Architecture, to Habitat for Humanity, and being a big sister at a local YMCA to compliment professional work. I really value volunteering and is something we’re actively trying to do more of in the office today.

“I was told, and others were too, that in order to survive you have to act and talk like a man. That was not appealing to me in any way [laughs]. I had to figure out what I was going to do, to have the education and the career that I wanted, without changing who I was.”

You then went on to OMA. Tell me about this. 

After I started at Princeton, there was an opportunity to work at with Rem Koolhaas and OMA in Rotterdam, so I took some time off to do that. At the time, it was a very young and international group of architects working together in teams, with projects that were buildings mostly in Europe. Although there was hierarchy, when we met with Rem he wanted to hear everyone’s opinion, which was eye-opening for me, coming from a corporate NYC world.

The office was filled with designs for new buildings and their corresponding large models - the McCormick Center, the Prada projects, Seattle Library, the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, the Opera House in Porto, to name a few. OMA was going through an incredibly poignant moment where there were questions and challenges about shifting in scale, working in different cities, budgets and materials, and building the office after projects of Kunsthal, Lille, and Bordeaux house. It was palpable that the office was going to change rapidly again, moving towards bigger work, more books, and more research across different scales.  

What were your take-aways from OMA for when you got back to Princeton?

A big take-away was my interest in building and books, and specifically in architects making books. This interest then led to an independent study with Beatriz Colomina about issues around maintenance, art and architecture. Maintenance Architecture was the first essay I published in Praxis and later as a book.

For me, school was instrumental in working through ideas and helped galvanize a set of knowledge that could be returned to later. My thesis project with Stan Allen was about education and nature - which we’re still working on in the office today, and that I’m more and more interested in as I have chances to build public projects.

Minnesota & 27th Affordable Housing, Washington, D.C. Photo: MOS.

1100 Eastern Affordable Housing, Washington, D.C. Photo: MOS.

Tell me about starting your practice. 

I fall more in the model of starting a practice by doing small scale things and building up. The practice started with an idea for a house, then a series of house projects, and then working on small competitions or making more personal-type things, books or objects, for ourselves. Making buildings as much as making books is the main focus of the office for the last dozen years. Together, we’ve published more than ten books, and a few other projects are about to come out. 

The idea is to keep the office really small, too. We are, all-together, on average six people, which for NYC is definitely a small office. We haven’t ever been larger than that. To work on a few projects at a time is important to me and for the practice to concentrate on a certain set of questions is crucial to our thinking. Michael and I are both educators, so the starting of the office and starting our teaching careers happened at the same time.

What do you consider some of the most significant things you’ve worked on?

The art school and studios Krabbesholm in Denmark, was an important project for us, in part because it was about looking at the process of what the thing could be, materially, before there was a form. The process was different than the way we typically work in the United States, where you’re expected to produce an image of the building before you even know what the building is or anything else about it.

Another is a project in Mexico called the “Apan Housing Laboratory,’ an educational building and master plan that we worked on with 32 other Mexican and international offices. It’s a learning center for housing, and that has been a valuable and important experience for us. There are questions over how this project will work over the long term, my desire would be that they form a board and could be more proactive around the issues of housing and education.

Recently, we finished a small pavilion in Versailles, ‘Petit Ecole’, that’s part of a biennial for children to learn about architecture. With this, we have a children’s book that we published through the CCA and Corraini Edizioni called “Houses for Sale” that is about a family who is in search of architecture. It’s published in French, Italian, and English. It’s a highly detailed illustrated book that shows a range of houses from modern to contemporary. They decide to build their own house, which is one of the houses we’ve designed, but in the end they decide to sell it and keep searching. Ideally, we’d do another one about housing, but it would take some convincing to make more drawings [laughs]! All of these projects are public projects and allowed us to look at social situations as they intersect with making forms and provide spaces that commingle the interior and nature.

“Making buildings as much as making books is the main focus of the office for the last dozen years. ”

Since we’re on the topic of children’s books, tell me about your kids and being a mom.

We have seven-year-old twins in first grade. It’s wonderful to see the world through their eyes. Because we also live above our office, they’re not at the office with us all the time. I work hard to let them have their time and their childhood somewhat separate from our work lives. Although they did travel with us to the Porto Academy and received certificates, the youngest to ever [laughs]!

They like to make projects - we might be in trouble, as I’m not sure architecture should be a career path [laughs]. The office has been open and supportive when the kids are there. I’m glad for that kind of experience and atmosphere for them. I remember when my dad took me to his work, and when he did projects at home; it’s super important for kids to see into the world.  Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to read the children’s book to their class. It was such fun and I was thrilled to be invited to another classroom to read to kindergarteners. I’m looking for other places to continue this work. It’s pure joy. 

Where are you in your career today?

What’s been important to me is to have a small office, and an office that has a clear direction and focus. For us, our focus is looking at projects related to the arts, non-profits, education, and housing, which includes houses. I’m probably pretty boring in that I like to work within a set of things over and over again, sort of like listening to one song on repeat, and then eventually move on to something new. Making books has been very rewarding. Crafting an office has been equally rewarding, even if it’s a struggle. I’m hoping we can continue to work on schools related to children and the arts, music, and houses and housing. But there are issues around affordable housing that are concerning and I’d like to work more on these issues in the public realm as they are critical to the health of any society.

School No. 3 (Petite École), Versailles, France. Photo: Iwan Baan.

School No. 1 (Krabbesholm Højskole), Skive, Denmark. Photo: Florian Holzherr.

Why is keeping the office small a goal?

Part of it is for me to truly work at some capacity on each of the projects, carefully and intently. Also to think about the work as a whole - we think about our work as a body and a collection of things that are not unrelated.

Keeping the office small is more about working through a certain set of issues over and over again - looking at type really intently, or dealing with an expertise in material, and to do all of this with a group of young architects. It’s exciting to see them grow in the office and engage in things like teaching, or writing, and many have started their own offices afterwards. We’re proud of this fact.  

What have been your biggest challenges?

Finding space and time to work on everything that I’d like to do. The majority of times, we like to say that its “against all odds”, the field of architecture. Sometimes everything feels like a challenge. One thing I’ve been thinking about, which is what I find interesting about your project, and which is critical at this moment, is finding writings by women architects about their work. We still don’t have a critical mass of essays by architects that are women writing on their own work, in the way that you might find with men who have written not only about their own work but others’ work as well. This has led me to recently start a program and a seminar about architect writers at GSAPP. Each week is about a different architect and her writings and building projects; there’s still a representation gap. 

However, you only have so much time in the day. If you do want to have a bigger office or more complex projects - how do you still write? Is there an expectation that women should be doing that when they’re also doing all these other things? It’s an enormous challenge. As an architect and educator that is writing, building, designing - as well as focusing on the issues surrounding women in architecture -there is still so much work to be done, but writing is one way to further thinking and reaching audiences. 

“We still don’t have a critical mass of essays by architects that are women writing on their own work.”

This is exactly why we started The Expert, especially after talking to you! On the flip side, what have been some of the biggest highlights?

Working and teaching in enriching environments. I’m extraordinarily lucky to get to do what I do every day.

What has been your general approach to your career?

To work hard and to not take opportunities or people for granted. At the point where there are challenges, setbacks and failures, it’s important to keep going against all odds. And to think carefully and creatively. To lead a creative life is what I am most interested in.  

What advice do you have for those who’d like to start their own practice?

Start by being small and nimble. It’s important to gain experience by doing everything yourself first.

Finally, what advice do you have for young women entering the field?

In terms of practice, and for anyone starting out, it’s important to spend time being creative and learning as much as you can. Be open to expressing what things you would like to work on, and be willing to give to whatever you’re working on - don’t hold back. If you spend your time holding back, you’re practicing holding back instead of practicing being creative. 

With respect to teaching, the kind of questions you’re asking of different women architects is a critical form of education and this offers a new form of knowledge that is important and something that doesn’t always occur in academia. I’m so thankful to be part of your project. Thank you Julia.

Thank you!