Professor Hilary French

 Emeritus Professor 

Personal statement

Hilary French trained as an architect at the AA in London and worked in practice as an architect and interior designer for many years on commercial and residential projects. She worked in Paris for Terence Conran on the expansion of the Habitat brand, and Reichen et Robert on diverse projects including Francois Mitterand’s first Grand Projet at La Villette and a new French embassy and residence in Doha, Qatar.

Since taking up full time academic work, Hilary spent 16 years at the RCA as Head of the School of Architecture and Design and academic lead for the world renowned Design Products course alongside eminent Industrial designers Ron Arad and Tord Boontje. Hilary has also contributed as an associate lecturer, to a range of design courses, at other UK Higher Education Institutes at all levels.

Research and external activities

Hilary has published several books about the design of housing and the development of the apartment block as a new early-twentieth-century building type. Her work steers away from the buildings and biographies of well-known architects and the politics of provision to focus on design issues at the scale of the individual dwelling and the urban landscape. Aimed largely at a practitioner audience, her work makes extensive use of drawings, the main tool of the architect.

More recently Hilary's varied research interest has shifted from the domestic realm to explore another under researched early-twentieth-century building the glamorous and often hidden interior spaces of dance halls and ballrooms. From time to time Hilary also writes book and exhibition reviews for the professional press, contributes to other HE courses as an external advisor and examiner, and regularly carries out reviews as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Research supervision

As well as contributing to research training courses, acting as internal examiner and mentoring new supervisors, Hilary has acted as director of studies or supervisor for a number of completed, mostly practice based, MPhil and PhD projects including:

• Julia Lohmann, PhD, 2017 - The Department of Seaweed
• Gilian Russell, PhD, 2016 - Re/staging: critical design and the curatorial. An analysis of emerging product design and the museum as context
• Roland Lamb, PhD, 2014 - The Seaboard: discreteness and continuity in musical interface design
• Jorge Roberto Lopes dos Santos, PhD, 2009 - 3D Modelling Tools: The experimental application of digital model making technologies in fetal medicine
• Richard Liddle, MPhil, 2006 - Can New Manufacturing Processes and Technology be Developed to use Recycled HDPE Plastic Effectively in Product Design?
• Natalie Woolf, PhD, 2004 - Plastic: a material metaphor
• Lois Walpole, PhD, 2004 - Grown Home, An exploration of processes for the manufacture and cultivation of willow products
• Ming-Huang Lin, PhD, 1999 - Bamboo, Dragon and Phoenix: The influence of cultural icons on the aesthetic language of everyday objects, especially when applied to Taiwanese product design.

Professional memberships

• RIBA - Royal Institute of British Architects, Member
• RCA Fellow
• FRSA - Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Teaching specialism

Architecture and Interior Design: practice, history and theory.  

Academic qualifications

• PhD, Architecture - University of Brighton
• MSc, History of Architecture - The Bartlett, University College London
• Architecture - The Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.