Gilly Huggert was the office manager of the Suva architectural firm in which her husband Stuart was a partner. In an article published by The Fiji Times on November 4, 1978, Mrs Huggert shared her journey from an architect to becoming an office manager.
Mrs Huggert had five years of architectural training at Bristol University in England and had knowledge of designing, drafting, administration of contracts and the economics of running a practice.
“People think it is extraordinary that I like to work for my husband. But I have always worked with him and would find it distressing if I didn’t,” she said.
Mrs Huggert was born in Southampton, England, being the only child in the family.
“My father was a civil engineer and I felt very strongly that I needed to follow in his footsteps,” she said. But Mrs Huggert did not fancy civil engineering at all.
“I was fairly artistic and chose to do architecture instead.”
She had been a bright student in her young days and obtained a scholarship to go to Bristol University at the age of 16. There, she met Stuart who was undertaking the same course.
She and Stuart were married in 1965, then decided to go to live in Nigeria. They arrived in Nigeria but were soon met with a civil war.
“It was not pleasant at all,” Mrs Huggert said.
During the civil war, she was evacuated to England when she was seven months pregnant with Catherine, their first child.
“I did not expect to see Stuart again because when I left, he was making petrol bombs to protect himself,” she said.
They soon returned to Nigeria in 1967, but after only spending a year, they decided to return to England because of the war.
“Stuart found a job with Sir Basil Spence and we stayed in London for two years.”
But having lived in Nigeria, they missed the warmth of the tropics. My second daughter Alexandra was only three-months-old, born in the miserable cold of London and I wanted to see the sun again.”
Incidentally, Stuart and Gilly were corresponding with Margaret and Andrew Knox, the bursar of the USP in Suva whom they had met in Nigeria at Ahmadu Bello University.
“It was the Knoxes who got us interested in Fiji. Andrew used to write and say that Fiji was a warm and fabulous place to live.”
They had heard that the English USP architect was looking for an architect to come to Fiji to administer building contracts.
“We applied and got the job.” Mrs Huggert arrived in Fiji in October, 1969 with two children, a Land-Rover, a boat, four crates and a sewing machine.
“But we were so broke I had to go out to work immediately. Larsen Holtom and Maybin in Suva were surprised to find a woman who actually did work on drawings and not pretty pictures, and hired me on the spot,” she said.
After only 18 months, the Huggetts decided to make Fiji their home, which led them to set up their own practice with two other architects.
They called the new firm Architects Pacific Design Partnership.
“This venture forced me to devote my time exhaustively to office administration,” Mrs Huggert said.
Her time on the drawing board was limited to graphic art work and the supervision of draughtsmen, and she was very valuable when the office would be in a rush.
“Sometimes I work right through the night. People do not realise how much time goes into the production of drawings. Anyone can put pencil to paper and produce a solution to an architectural problem but the most successful solutions only come after a great deal of thought and an even greater amount of ‘used up’ paper.”
In 1976, when the economy of Fiji was in a depression, the couple faced a hard time making ends meet, so Mrs Huggert started a catering business to ease the problems.
With her partner in the business, Gaetane Duncan, the catering enterprise called Bacchus catered for a very special clientele and only did cocktails and exclusive dinner parties.
Besides her office, cooking and family, Mrs Huggert found time to join the committee for the Fiji’s Museum’s exhibition the year after, which was 1979, to mark the 100 years of Indians’ arrival in Fiji.
