That question became a mantra of sorts, to highlight the achievements of women architects. On October 1, 2023, we lost the pioneering woman behind that often-asked question, Beverly Willis. She became an architect, industrial designer and inclusion advocate at a time when women were effectively excluded from a myriad of professions. She passed away at the age of 95, leaving behind an enviable legacy.
After pursuing an education that included studying engineering and then securing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she moved to San Francisco and established her design firm in 1958. Later, she received her California license to practice architecture and began receiving commissions. Her notable commissions in San Francisco include the San Francisco Ballet Building, the first of its kind in the US. The ballet company was working out of a rented, inadequate space at the time of her commission, like many other ballet companies nationwide. Willis did exhaustive research on the function of a ballet building and the needs of the dancers. According to Wikipedia, The Boston Globe noted, “Dance people don’t merely visit the San Francisco Ballet building: They make pilgrimages to it.”
Her ideas regarding reuse showed the same commitment to researching function within design. Take her San Francisco commission to transform what have become beloved vintage Victorian-era residential buildings along Union Street into retail. At the time, they were abandoned, deteriorating and thought to be teardowns. Willis chose a very different path.
This was 1963, and a group of investors commissioned Willis to design a new commercial building that would require the demolition of three Victorian buildings. They included two Victorian buildings built around 1870 for lumber baron James Cudworth’s daughters, dubbed the Twin Wedding houses, at 1980 Union Street. The third building was also a large Victorian.
Ironically, San Francisco’s then-recently adopted commercial parking regulations had a financial impact on the project and impacted the financial equation for the investors. Willis’ renovation concept to replace the buildings’ foundations and then add an additional story made the project more financially viable than razing the old and building anew. In fact, it nearly doubled the commercial space of the complex while preserving the historical Victorian’s façades.
This proved to be a visionary step in the history of San Francisco and grabbed the attention of other cities nationwide grappling with the old and new.
The decision to rehabilitate, rather than raze, the Victorian structures was prophetic of future revitalization efforts in San Francisco. As noted by historian Clare Lorenz, the project set the style for regeneration of the Union Street commercial district and foreshadowed national efforts to restore old buildings in city centers. In recognition, Willis received the State of California Governor’s Design Award of Exceptional Distinction and an AIA Award of Merit.
Her accomplishments hardly stop there. An internet search turned up the fact that Willis is credited with the invention of the Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis, or CARLA (not to be confused with Car Learning to Act – an open simulator for urban driving). CARLA is a proprietary software package developed in-house by Willis and Associates, Inc. Architects and Planners (WAI) from 1971. It is the world’s first computational design software.
Throughout her life, Willis worked to bring more attention to the work of female architects. She made a short film Unknown New York: The City That Women Built. Made in 2018, it features a creative and illustrative narrative device: a map of Manhattan redrawn to show how the city has changed because of women’s contributions.
One of her legacy achievements is her creation of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation in 2002, meant to raise the visibility of women whose lives and accomplishments in the field of architecture are deliberately missing from the architectural history textbooks.