ALTHOUGH IT IS SPRING IN LOS ANGELES, it’s still chilly out as Billie Tsien M.Arch. ’77 speaks to full lecture hall on the UCLA campus. She’s beautifully dressed in rich orange and chartreuse fabrics. Her choice in clothing reflects her architectural mentality: tactile stimulation and material exploration, fine art and functionality.

Billie was back on campus because she was the recipient of the 2000-01 Harvey S. Perloff chair in the department of architecture and urban design. The Perloff chair brings a combination of dance, set design, film and video within an architectural setting. The week’s project was designing a dance set during an intensive five days with 13 undergraduates.

Being back at UCLA “is a funny feeling and exciting at the same time,” she tells the audience. A lot has changed since she was a student. “The students are so much more sophisticated now,” she says.

Born in Ithaca, N.Y., in 1949, Billie earned her bachelor’s of fine arts from Yale in 1971 before coming to UCLA. She has worked with her husband, Tod Williams, since 1977, and together they have a teenage son. In 1986 the couple opened the New York firm of Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates. The firm has won numerous accolades, receiving the Brunner Prize for Distinguished Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996 the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design two years later. They are also the recipients of the New York City AIA’s Medal of Honor. The 15-person firm works on about five major projects per year, and share an unusual working space as innovative as their architectural designs.

“We work in a shared space, working together in the same room,” she says. “It is very important for us to work this way, we become an extended family.” Within this working environment, there is no division of labor into design, production, model making or interiors. Each architect is involved in the making of contracts, billing and writing letters; and because the firm doesn’t have a secretary, the architects themselves take turns answering the phone.

This sort of environment reflects the basic ideology of Tod Williams Billie Tsien and Associates, bridging together theory and practice, fine art and architecture. “Our work is not about a single hand,” Billie explains. “It’s about many hands clasped together.”

Architecture Record describes Billie and Tod’s work as “tactile architecture” that “begs to be touched.” The magazine, profiling the firm in its March 2001 issue, says that the architects “bring out the timeless qualities” of materials such as stone, concrete, steel, glass, and wood. They also experiment regularly with a variety of materials, such as plastic laminates and resins. “We think about materials as much from the inside going out as from the outside going in,” Tod says.

Their works include the Spiegel Pool House, Feinberg Hall at Princeton University, the Whitney Museum of American Art Downtown Branch in New York City and the Neurosciences Institute in LaJolla, Calif., which won a National AIA Honor Award. They have designed the John Hopkins University Student Art Center in Baltimore, Md., and have completed several residences in New York City, Southampton and Phoenix. The team designed a major addition to the Phoenix Art Museum, a science building and aquatic center for The Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, and the Natatorium at the Cranbrook.

Recently, the firm worked on the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Located near the Museum of Modern Art, Billie calls the museum the “jewel in the belly button of MOMA.”

“Museums are intensely public places,” she says. “We’re making a chunk of New York that’s going to stay there.” It’s the first museum built in New York since the Whitney, some 40 years ago.

Her work tends to feature buildings “that sit heavily on the ground and feel routed.” Some are literally carved into the ground, such as the Neurosciences Institute. This “scientific monastery” is literally cut into the ground some 40 feet below.

Among her many accomplishments, Billie has served on various panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Percent for Art Jury for the Cities of New York and Seattle, and is on the board of the Public Art Fund. She has taught at numerous institutions, including Parsons School of Design, Harvard and Yale. She held the Thomas Jefferson chair at the University of Virginia in 1990. She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Harvey S. Perloff chair in the department of architecture and urban design.

She is particularly interested in work that bridges both art and architecture. Billie describes her style as “a more complex, richer version of modern art, believing in tenants of modern architecture.” She believes in the “clarity of structure,” and doesn’t support the idea of architecture as “decoration.”

“Architecture really does touch the world of art, but at the same time has use,” says Billie, who spent several years as a painter before pursuing architecture. “These two things together produce a lot of satisfaction.”

The firm’s mission statement begins: “Whatever we design must be of use, but at the same time transcend its use. It must be rooted in time and site and client needs but it must transcend time and site and client needs.”

“I love the rediscovery of what is really there all along; the primal connections we all have with water and sky,” Billie explains. She believes that her work should reflect “optimism and love,” and that the spiritual aspect of the work will emerge if the work is done well.

“That’s why I’m an architect,” she says, smiling.

From UCLAlumni Magazine