J. Robert Hillier has designed and built a net zero carbon home on Lake Carnegie

By Ilene Dube | Photography by Julian Edgren

With his signature foulard bowtie, rosy complexion, and thick white hair, J. Robert (Bob) Hillier could pass for a man decades younger. He sprints up and down stairs, followed everywhere by Mylo, his 16-year-old Abyssinian cat.

A raconteur, his stories are rife with detail. He remembers names and dates at will, and at 88, still oversees Studio Hillier, his architectural design firm, and Witherspoon Media Group, as publisher of Princeton Magazine and Town Topics newspaper. He serves as officer on several nonprofit boards and is in his third term as president of his Class of 1959 at Princeton University.

And he entertains – big time! – hosting his class reunion every four years out of five.

The living room with views out to Lake Carnegie.

To enter a new chapter in his life, Hillier has just moved into a carbon-neutral house he designed on Lake Carnegie. It is, perhaps, one of his grandest achievements in residential design, the culmination of all that he has learned over the years.

Solar panels generate everything that is needed to power the house, as well as some for the grid, and green roofs planted with succulents help with insulation and stormwater management. Green roofs require minimal care and outlast more traditional roof materials. “We are getting more and more requests for them,” he says. The house is heated and cooled by a geothermal system that draws water from the aquifer 160 feet below ground.

A fountain at the front entry is colorfully lit with LED lights, conveniently controlled by a smartphone.

One enters through a frosted glass gate (“it abstracts what you see,” Hillier points out) to a courtyard with a fountain that puts on a light show at night. Who needs fireworks when you can operate this spectacle from your phone? (Although fireworks are a part of the package too — more on that later.)

Look up to the second floor and an enormous painting of an abstracted street scene by Philadelphia-based Tom Brady is visible through the glass. All façades are both glass and poly-ash, a byproduct of steel mills. It is painted an almost black shade called “Moments.” Indeed, at different moments it takes on a different hue, depending on the sunlight.

Black is the color of choice for the courtyard, lined in black stone, black mulch, black boulders, and even black grass. “Black is going to be the hot color of 2028,” says Hillier. Black is the new black.

A view of the living room through to the kitchen and stairway.

From the blackness of the exterior, we transition to white light within — an off-white porcelain tile throughout, silky white oak on the cabinets and drawers. From the kitchen through the dining room and living room there are no walls, no barriers. The view of the lake is the reason Hillier selected this site, and each of the four levels provides a different facet of that view.

“From the kitchen you can simultaneously entertain, dine, hang out, and cook,” he says. There’s a Miele induction stove that is vented with a slim glass piece — Hillier jokes that big stainless-steel hoods are like altars — and a Sub-Zero refrigerator neatly stocked with food, including BAI beverages. The Wolf oven has a steaming drawer. Hillier cooks his own meals, “salads and fruit, and five ounces of fish, usually salmon,” he says.

There’s a catering kitchen so that the primary kitchen remains unobstructed during big parties, and an entertainment closet to store all the chairs and other party paraphernalia. There’s even a powder room where caterers can change.

Although he is one of the world’s most accomplished architects, having designed major buildings in 20 states and 54 countries — at one time his architectural firm was third largest in the world — and earned more than 350 design awards, Hillier is down to earth and generous of spirit.

He is someone who cares about the world we live in. His philanthropy spans educational institutions, arts organizations and museums, historical societies, land preservation organizations, and, locally, the Princeton Public Library, HomeFront, McCarter Theatre, Princeton Medical Center, the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society, the Arts Council of Princeton, and many others.

The primary closet includes a dedicated nook for Hillier’s extensive bowtie collection.

Hillier makes a point of giving credit to those who work for him and has a knack for hiring people who have a passion for what they do. Lucien Pebbles, the artisan who fabricated the steel stairway, has an MFA in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania; the builder, Rabbi Mayer Kesserman/Adeer Builders, assembled a crew to meet Hillier’s high standards; and project architect Alex Kim coordinated all the drawings and elements “that really make the house special,” says Hillier. “His attention to detail is the most I have ever seen in 60 years of practice. This thoroughness is what the custom home buyer really wants, and as a result, I chose him to take on a renovation and addition for a house I designed 50 years ago.”

Most of the furnishings in the new house are from Hillier’s former residence in New Hope, Pa., “Autretemps,” that he shared with his late wife, Barbara Hillier. The Nakashima dining table is one that Hillier’s mother bought 80 years ago for $35, he recounts. She paid $10 for each of the Nakashima chairs that are now being offered on 1stDibs for more than $8,000 each. “She used the table as her desk,” says Hillier, who refinished it so that it extends the view of the lake.

Florence Bell Hillier was an artist who owned three flower shops in Princeton and wrote a book on arranging flowers. Examples of her artwork can be seen throughout the house, as well as at The Waxwood, the residential building Hillier designed on Princeton’s Quarry Street that was formerly the Witherspoon School for Colored Children. He worked in the flower shop when he was growing up and attributes his green thumb to that experience. The houseplants he personally waters are thriving, including a collection of orchids in specially designed niches.

“Gustave” greets guests at the front entry.

At the front entry, a visitor is greeted by “Gustave” — a knight in shining armor that Hillier says has greeted guests to all three of the residences he designed for himself. Those homes include one on Ridgeview Circle in Princeton that he lived in with his first wife, Susie, and their children J.B. and Kim (who died at age 20); and Autretemps, where he lived with Barbara, who was his business partner as well as wife, and their daughter, Jordan.

Also greeting visitors is a two-part ceramic sculpture by Betty Woodman, who the New York Times called “one of the first ceramic artists to be treated seriously … who pushed boundaries in the art world.”

In a way, Barbara’s spirit is still very present in this house, in the art and antiques, in family photos, and even design elements. Although Hillier had only been living in the house for three weeks at the time of my visit, everything was in its place. The artwork looks as if the space for it was intentionally designed as such, yet Hillier says he wasn’t thinking of the artwork and its placement in the design.

Every objet d’art comes with a story. The shiny silvery abstracted figure in the backyard, viewed through the windows, was a housewarming gift from sculptor David Savage when Hillier moved into his home on Ridgeview Circle. That home’s steel and mirrored façade, like the Savage sculpture, reflected the surrounding woods. Hillier worked for Savage, also an architect, during summers while at Princeton University. Savage, a postwar modernist who designed many homes in Princeton’s Littlebrook neighborhood and was co-developer of Kendall Park in South Brunswick, was married to fine art photographer Naomi Savage, niece of Man Ray.

Ever since his boyhood, Hillier’s parents gave him artwork as gifts. An 1880 print of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral was given to him by his father when he was 6 — it hangs in the front hallway. Upstairs is a collection of Japanese fish prints given by his mother — one print on his birthday and one on Christmas each year for four years. Barbara continued the tradition: in the library is a 1723 set of 12 prints she gave him for his birthday.

Indeed, Bob likes fish — as a youth he bred tropical fish in a corner of his mother’s flower shop and financed his Lawrenceville School tuition by selling the fish to Princeton students. As an adult he has fished big bass from Plainsboro Pond, waking at 5 a.m. to do so. At his new house, he has a row boat and his eyes set on a spot on the lake.

A view of stairway and hanging light fixture.

The steel stairway that connects all four stories has a vertical shaft, or stairwell hole, that provides views from top to bottom. From the top dangles a chandelier that suspends for two-and-a-half stories, with tiny white spiraling glass balls.

“It was Alex Kim who found the company that manufactured the chandelier, and he then worked out the detail of the helix which increases the density of lights as it comes down through that magnificent stair opening,” says Hillier.  One can’t help but think of the Renzo Piano-designed Whitney Museum building on Gansevoort Street in New York, where the well hole is used as exhibition space.

The Nakashima dining table, and view towards the kitchen.

In fact, with its gallery-like spaces on all the levels and the artwork throughout, it does feel like an art museum, with prints by Picasso, Miro, mixed media and painting by Le Corbusier, a portrait of Hillier by Al Hirschfeld (with three Ninas), large color-refracting sculptures by Vasa (prominent in the Color Field movement), and many others.

Even the light fixtures, such as a pencil-thin tube of light that hangs over the Nakashima table, are works of art.

A flameless fireplace between the living room and study uses mist and lighting to mimic the flames.

Separating the living room from the library is an electric “fireplace.” Steam rises between two sheets of glass, giving the illusion of smoke, and a recording of crackling completes the hearthside experience.

The library, also called the TV hangout room, has a collection of tomes on the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. One could while away the days getting absorbed in those books while in the Eames chair in which Hillier has reclined since 1968.

The library features an Eames lounge chair and vintage fish prints.

“If we look at the building types that have been at the core of Hillier’s practice for 60 years, we find libraries, laboratories, and schools; places for work, healthcare, public institutions, and places to live,” writes Stan Allen in the foreword to Hillier: Selected Works (ORO Editions, 2023). “Each of these building types has the capacity to concretely improve people’s lives.”

From the Sydney Harbor Casino Complex in Australia to the American International School in Vienna and Duke University Medical School in Singapore, to the Cornell Ornithology Center in Ithaca, N.Y., GlaxoSmithKline Global headquarters in London, skyscrapers in New York City, and the interior renovation of the U.S. Supreme Court building, Hillier has indeed improved lives. His firm, at its peak, had offices in New York; Princeton; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Tampa; Dallas; London; Shanghai; Beijing; and Dubai.

And yet many of his beloved buildings are closer to home, notably the Princeton Public Library, the Annenberg Science Center at the Peddie School, the Kirby Math and Science Center at The Lawrenceville School, Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center in Plainsboro (Hillier personally designed the chapel there), the Richard Hughes Justice Center in Trenton, numerous residential projects including Copperwood Princeton and The Waxwood, and faculty housing for the Institute for Advanced Study.

In 1989 Inc. magazine named Hillier New Jersey’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and in 2006 Hillier Architecture was named AIA New Jersey Architectural Firm of the Year. In 2019, New Jersey Institute of Technology renamed its architecture and design school the J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier College of Architecture and Design.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Hillier grew up in Princeton. His father, James Hillier, worked for RCA. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, he is credited with designing and building the first successful electron microscope in the world. “He wanted to be an artist but then he won a physics scholarship and went on to get his Ph.D.,” says Hillier. In his office is a pastel by his father of a sailboat in Nantucket. James and Florence met in high school, according to their son, drawn to each other because they were both artists.

Also holding center stage in the office is a sculptural model of a skyscraper for a New York showroom Bob and Barbara designed for Steelcase with a stepped ascension and dome top.

Hillier graduated from Princeton Country Day School and The Lawrenceville School, and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from Princeton University. For over three decades he has been part of the core faculty of Princeton University’s School of Architecture and is still teaching two graduate seminar courses.

In 1978, when J. Robert Hillier, Architect, was a medium-sized design firm with a dramatic concrete and glass office on Alexander Road, Philadelphia native Barbara Feinberg came to work as an interior designer, expanding the firm’s offerings. She went on to become Barbara Hillier in 1986, opened and led the firm’s regional office in Philadelphia, and after 13 years became a licensed architect in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York — without ever taking a single course in in architecture. Daughter Jordan came along in 1993.

In 2011, at the age of 60 — and after having completed numerous important buildings — Barbara returned to school to earn a master’s degree in architecture at Princeton University, fulfilling a long-held dream.

Together, Bob and Barbara’s lives were filled with travel (and buying art), entertaining, Broadway shows, movies, and dances.

“Her human-centric approach empowers clients and stakeholders while driving her design toward unexpected solutions,” says Barbara’s bio in Hillier: Selected Works. “She begins with people. Then, she thoughtfully layers context, history, and the particulars of place into her solutions.” She was recognized with numerous awards including the coveted Pennsylvania AIA Silver Medal and the Chicago Athenaeum Award.

The Irving Convention Center in Irving, Texas, which soars 178 feet into the Texas sky — its convention rooms at different levels are connected by escalators and terraces — is considered the defining work of her career. It represents “the height of her ability to challenge not merely for aesthetic value but rather the meaning that a project can convey upon its surroundings and, more importantly, its community,” wrote Michael Friebele in Columns, a quarterly publication produced by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

After six years of living with Alzheimer’s disease, Barbara died in 2022. She was 71. The Hilliers had been together for 44 years, 38 of them in the New Hope, Pa., residence. Bob sold Autretemps — with its 22 acres, glass silo, and swimming pool — in 2023, living in one of his rental properties until the new house was ready.

Hillier attributes his interest in modern architecture to his first client in 1966 who was transferred to Hopewell from California. The wife of the family came to the school of architecture and asked for a good architect, Hillier recounts, and was given both his and Michael Graves’ names. Hillier got the job, he believes, because his office was on Nassau Street with an elegant travertine lobby, whereas Graves’ first studio was over a fish market with an outside staircase.

A vintage pool table, made in Trenton in 1845, features inlaid woodwork and 2-inch-thick slate.

The lower level of the house has more art, more views, and a pool table given to Hillier by a classmate who moved permanently to Australia. It was made in Trenton in 1845 and has inlaid woodwork and 2-inch-thick slate. It is so heavy that “two guys in a truck” had to take it apart, store it, and put it back together at the new house.

“I used to play pool with Gordon Wu,” says Hillier, referring to the billionaire chairman of Hopewell Holdings, one of the largest commercial landlords in Hong Kong who has given millions to Princeton University. Wu was a class ahead of Hillier. “He was one of the best pool competitors!” Hillier says.

The primary bedroom.

Upstairs are three bedrooms, allocated for Jordan and her family (husband Alex Adams and two children) when they visit, which, laments Hillier, is not often enough these days. “They’re so busy.” Jordan’s presence is felt in a large photo of her staring out at the Dead Sea at age 14, taken by her mother.

The reward for climbing all four flights is the roof deck with yet another view of the lake. It feels like being on top of the world, overlooking the neighbors and their yards. And it is from here that Hillier can watch Princeton’s fireworks, just beyond a row of pines. He had 25 guests to see them during his recent Reunions Weekend soirée — even before he moved in.

“What keeps me going,” Hillier says, “is that every client presents a different personality, a different problem to solve, and a different site with its own set of challenges. That’s what makes architecture such an interesting profession.”

The back of the house faces Lake Carnegie.