Beverly Willis died on October 1, 2023. To mark a year since her passing and to remember her wide impact on advancing the role of women in architecture, AN has collaborated with the organization she founded, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF), to gather a host of voices, largely those of architects, who knew her well.
Tizziana Baldenebro, executive director, BWAF
I met Beverly briefly in her final days. My mother, her caretaker, spoke fondly of her stubborn and passionate patient. It was through Beverly that I came to learn about her foundation and, in my brief time at the helm of the organization, the conversation of legacy has emerged on numerous occasions. What might it mean, particularly for women, to be known beyond their domestic sphere? What might it mean, especially for young women, to find mentorship and role models within their gender?
In the accompanying texts you will find a portrait of a complex woman, whose greatest legacy rests in her indefatigable efforts to advance gender equity. Beverly Willis is hailed by many as a trailblazer in the field of architecture, though few of her buildings are known and even fewer remain. She is a trailblazer because of her visionary approach and tireless advocacy for women in architecture. This memorial is dedicated to celebrating her extraordinary legacy, which spans over six decades. Beyond her remarkably prodigious design contributions, she founded the BWAF to champion women in architecture and ensure our contributions are recognized, our voices are heard, and our networks are visible. Her leadership and mentorship have inspired countless architects to break barriers and pursue their creative visions. As we reflect on her monumental impact, these voices honor Beverly Willis not only as a gifted architect but also as a catalyst for change, whose work continues to shape the built environment and the architectural community for generations to come.
Deborah Berke, founding Principal, TenBerke; dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor, Yale School of Architecture
I knew Beverly Willis from my earliest years as an architect. I appreciated her interest in my work throughout my career. Her efforts for women architects—in terms of building a shared community, supporting the work of women practitioners, and connecting women in the discipline and in the profession—were extraordinary. She was an outstanding mentor to fellow architects, students, educators, and to women of all professions. Her generosity towards others was inspiring, especially considering she also had a busy architecture practice of her own. In her own work, Bev’s designs are powerful and poetic. She was a leader in so many ways, as a pioneer of adaptive reuse; the first woman president of AIA California; one of the first architects to utilize computer-programming for architectural design; and first woman to establish an organization supporting women architects. Her work has had an enormous impact on the design community, and it will continue to create positive change for generations to come.
Joan Blumenfeld, principal, Perkins&Will
The first time I encountered Bev the gale force wind of her personality almost blew me over. She had a gimlet-eyed focus, which at the time was simply aimed at convincing me to join the board at the BWAF. That single-minded intensity was what made her great, and what also made her sometimes challenging to those who did not know her well enough to understand it.
She paved her own way, pushing through barriers that would have stymied any normal human. Without that hyper-active drive and an extremely creative mind, she would not have been able to accomplish what she did. She decided she would be an architect despite lack of background or education, and through her force of will made it so. She decided computers were the way of the future, and in 1970 developed a prescient planning program named CARLA. In 1979, when the voices of the very few women architects who existed were usually dismissed, she decided she would be heard, becoming the first woman president of the California chapter of the AIA. When she decided to retire from practice in 2002, it pained her that women architects were still not being heard, their accomplishments ignored or misattributed. She created an eponymous foundation to address that head on, kick-starting it with a generous endowment of her own funds.
There is not room to list all the many other barriers she broke. I cannot say how many times I thought she had gone off the deep end with some crazy BHAG*, only to realize later that indeed, she had made it so.
She was not easy but she was amazing and unique, a valuable friend who I truly admired, and she left the world of work for women architects (and other professions, too) a better place for her efforts.
*Big Hairy Audacious Goal
Frances Bronet, president, Pratt Institute
I first met Beverly (Bev) Willis in the late 1990s when I was one of a team of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Women’s Leadership Council ad hoc committee founders. During our impromptu meetings at the ACSA Annual Conference, Bev would join us, quietly observing. Bev was not a faculty member; her very presence questioned our insulated community. And very quickly, we understood that she had a mission about women in architecture, and all venues were game.
Not long thereafter, during my ACSA presidency, Bev prodded me with directives on actions to take, who to trust, and when to meet. She urged me to formalize the Women’s Leadership Council structure and incorporate it into the conference schedules, encouraging a limited group meeting informally to build much greater capacity and outreach, to leverage our power effectively. Bev pushed us, especially during ACSA conferences, to take on new challenges and become even more insistent and active in the field. Following her guidance, we formalized our committee and expanded our reach through planned presentations and workshops that went beyond faculty purviews to American Institute of Architects’ meetings, to celebrations at professional award events, and to communities that would not otherwise know our work and our willingness to partner and mentor. I am sure my own keynotes on architects as university presidents were born from Willis’ early imperatives. Her relentless push for visibility and recognition of women in architecture inspired a dean of architecture to begin writing a book on the subject based on our collective work.
Beverly Willis was a powerful force in the architecture community, unafraid to examine norms, change the conversation, bring people together, and expect action marked by vision, impact and compassion. Her legacy continues.
Lori Brown, distinguished professor, Syracuse University
I had the great honor and privilege of being both mentored by and friends with Beverly Willis. I know we cared deeply about many of the same issues, sometimes in almost perfect alignment and other times, not as much. And that is one of the beautiful aspects about Beverly—regardless of whether we saw exactly eye-to-eye—she respected and wanted to support those committed to like-minded causes. She was an outspoken and much needed advocate for women in architecture. During our many check-ins, Bev would encourage me to see other avenues to pursue to move forward and ways to work around what appeared as roadblocks. She was and remains an immense inspiration for me and what I hope to contribute through my life.
In writing her entry for the forthcoming Bloomsbury publication Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960-2020, I was overwhelmed to learn of all that she accomplished over her lifetime. For example, she learned to fly a single engine propeller plane at age 15 to participate in the Women’s Air Service during World War II, in 1971 she created the computer program CARLA to analyze complex site conditions creating a more environmentally sensitive approach to large scale housing development, she was an early pioneer in adaptive reuse, she was a Founding Trustee of the National Building Museum, and was one of two U.S. representatives to the United Nations conference on Habitat I.
Bev’s thinking and practice continually responded to the needs of contemporary society, making things happen most often way before the profession ever did. She was fearless, resourceful, and resilient, leading to a very long life that took risks, held true to an ethics that was not always in vogue, and always forged her own path. Hers is a life I am inspired by, and I hope she knew how much her friendship and mentorship meant to me. I am truly indebted to Bev, her belief in me, and her model of fostering a better world.
Diane Favro, distinguished research professor in architecture and urban design, School of the Arts and Architecture, UCLA; fellow, Society of Architectural Historians; Samuel H. Kress Professor, CASVA, National Gallery
When I began teaching architectural history in the mid-1980s women were active in all aspects of the field, but few had broken through the glass ceiling to head firms, hold tenured positions, or receive major commissions; only a handful appeared in histories of architecture. Then there was Bev. A force of nature, the only ceilings she saw were those she herself designed, and they grew ever taller, ever complex, and increasingly influential. By the 1970s she had already pioneered adaptive reuse construction of historic buildings (the Union Street Stores), developed a novel computerized approach to land analysis (CARLA), and designed a major cultural institution (the San Francisco Ballet Building), all deploying a research-oriented approach. In the 1980s she helped create the National Building Museum and the non-profit Architecture Research Institute fostering interdisciplinary exchanges regarding the development of global cities. These diverse undertakings repeatedly exposed examples of gender inequity, sexism, and erasure. Bev reacted with force. She established the BWAF, bringing together people from numerous fields to promote the interests of women in architecture. I am proud to have participated. Her broad vision and determined inclusiveness of the subjects, disciplines, and concerns associated with architecture continue to inspire. Among various early initiatives, BWAF stimulated research on women’s past contributions through scholarships, lectures, events, and films; the online Dynamic National Archive documented women’s projects. Like Bev, the Foundation pivots in numerous directions simultaneously, pushing beyond entrenched thinking to explore underlying motivations, interactions, and issues important to all genders. The institutions and exemplary career of Beverly Willis continue to expedite changes in the contemporary profession, building industry, and academia, encouraging participants to rise above the confining ceilings of the past. My own life and aspirations were significantly elevated by her example and friendship. Bev, thanks for the inspiration!
Jeanne Gang, founding partner, Studio Gang
I first met Beverly shortly after she had created her foundation, when she reached out to me after seeing an exhibition that I had designed for the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.
Meeting Beverly was a shock to my system—in a good way! I had never heard of someone starting a foundation devoted to the success of women in the field of architecture. Up ‘til then, the feeling had essentially been that we were on our own.
In the years that followed, Beverly continued to impress because she always had a plan to help women succeed, whether it was a double standard that she wanted to topple, a technology she wanted to harness, or a resource she wanted to tap. She spent her time devising intelligent and strategic ways to level the playing field for women in architecture, and for getting them recognized for their accomplishments. She made it okay to be outspoken, while always backing up her words with meaningful actions like the foundation and all it has become. She was also fun loving and delighted everyone—no matter their gender—who were lucky enough to engage with her. I count myself in that lucky group.
Robert Ivy
Beverly Willis entered a room radiating the radical optimism of the architect. Throughout a career marked by strong determination and creativity, she transcended the given boundaries of the profession, forging a path that cleared the way for a diverse constellation of others to succeed. Ultimately, through her personal qualities including a mastery of communication and an unvanquished will, she personified a new kind of architect—powerful, liberated, and exultant.
Mary McLeod, professor of architecture, Columbia GSAPP; Victoria Rosner, dean, Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Beverly Willis was a transformative and visionary leader in American architecture, both through her own practice and through her advocacy for women architects. In launching the foundation that bore her name, Bev created an innovative and important means to support women in the building professions. She opened up a space for the revision of mainstream architectural history to include women’s significant contributions, contributions that had been largely erased by historians and architecture school curricula.
It was through sheer force of her unyielding will that Beverly Willis imagined into existence the project Pioneering Women of American Architecture. She began from the irrefutable observation that the work of women architects could not be written into American architectural history if there was no extant documentation of women’s work. Sexism and the star system combined to effect an erasure of women’s contributions, and Bev sought nothing less than writing women back into the historical record. She convinced the National Endowment for the Humanities to go along with her, and the Pioneering Women website was born.
Eight years later, Pioneering Women is the largest effort of its kind to date, involving more scholars, more primary research, and more visual documentation than any other work on American women in architecture. Moreover, the website is free to the public, and made even more accessible through the podcast New Angle: Voice. Bev’s generosity and farsighted vision are permanently embodied in Pioneering Women and the larger work of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.
For us as the co-editors of Pioneering Women, one of the project’s many pleasures was the opportunity to collaborate with Bev. She was a brilliant leader whose enthusiasm, commitment, and creativity sparked forth at every encounter. One of our very favorite profiles on the site is the one of Bev herself, written by her wife, architectural historian Wanda Bubriski. We will greatly miss Bev’s energy, brilliance, and courage– she was, herself, a true pioneer.
Julia Murphy, partner, SOM
“Don’t just sit there at your desk, get up, go out, make friends, volunteer, get work!” On my invitation, Beverly Willis was lecturing SOM’s New York office about women in architecture. Little did I know that she had arrived in my life and was about to offer me a decade of mentorship during my tenure as board member and board president of the BWAF.
When I look back now, I am amazed that Bev was eighty-two when I met her. Still actively engaged in the BWAF, Bev was magnetically attracting new friends and allies to her campaign to shine a light on women’s impact in architecture and design. Bev had the unique capacity to ask for help in a way that ultimately helped the helper. She understood that her ability to transform the architectural profession from the closed loop boys club was dependent on the success of women – and that’s where Bev and I aligned.
After years of focusing the foundation’s work on documenting and advancing senior-level women, Bev intuitively understood that it was time to shift strategy. In the doldrums of the early 2010s, women had broken through to a few high-profile positions as firm owners and even “starchitects,” but this was the exception. Bev invited me to meet her for an opening at MOMA. We toured the exhibit, drank wine in the sculpture garden, and before I knew it, she tasked me with developing a new program for mid-career women—the leaky pipeline of graduates who made up 50% of graduating classes at the elite schools and entry level jobs but who dropped out of the field after a few years. This program grew into the BWAF Emerging Leaders Program, which has now reached over 400 women across the country and internationally with a series of master classes from architect-mentors who share their own career journeys and answer candid questions from a close cohort group.
It wasn’t until the long subway ride back to Brooklyn that I realized what had happened. I worked for Bev. It took several years to realize that Bev was also working for me. I wrote the prospectus, designed a brochure, and surreptitiously printed trifold copies after hours for pitching to potential funders.
I was 35, and Bev took me seriously. She became a trusted mentor, especially through my career at SOM. When I decided to move into a management role, I had the benefit of the toughest, most resilient, most pioneering women of 20th-century architecture behind me. She was one of the first calls I made after being promoted to partner at SOM. She demanded a press release right away. My arrival was her vindication.
When I waivered last year about taking on a new long-term lease for BWAF, Bev was stalwart; she had no doubts. Take the lease, build the space—grow or die. Bev modeled strength but she also modeled vulnerability. Knowing Bev taught me about personal power, the frustrations of aging and the benefit of holding tight to the things that keep life interesting like new projects, new friends that she was still making in her 90s and even while in hospice where Bev met and recommended that we hire writer and curator Tizziana Baldenebro as the our new executive director, following the retirement of Cynthia Krakauer.
Bev lived her ideas and built a family around her passionate interest in architecture and feminism. Her success, my success, the future success of the foundation and our mission were intertwined. I can’t bring myself to delete the last voicemails that she left for me. Urgently asking me to call her to talk about a new idea for a program or a new donor to call. “$5,000— that’s thinking small. Ask for nothing less than $50,000.” It was worth the price of admission each time we talked. She pushed. She questioned. She led and empowered others. I will miss Bev’s provocations- to do more, to change faster, to build more boldly. But I also miss her notes, her calls, her dedication to her wife, Wanda, and her refusal to ever wear a seatbelt.
Jessica Varner, professor, historian, advocate
I met Bev and her partner, Wanda, over ten years ago. A mutual friend in the Connecticut architectural community introduced us. Over the years, I had the joy of witnessing Bev draw in a local group of feminist friends and eclectic, creative thinkers on many occasions, who often gathered over dinner or spent the day together at Bev and Wanda’s home overlooking the Long Island Sound in Granite Bay. One such annual ritual included fall’s last full moon swim in nearby Branford, and I was lucky to get an invitation often. We ate, swam, sang, and bonded. Bev was a natural mentor. Learning and listening about how long Bev fought for gender equity in architecture inspired me and many others to push harder for a more just and equitable architectural profession. Bev’s sharp intellect, advocate heart, bold feminism, and ability to confidently converse with anyone will forever be missed.
Thaïsa Way, director of garden & landscape studies, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
There are leaders recognized for their fiery speeches and big presence, and then there are those who do the work, make the work possible, and steward the work to success. Beverly Willis certainly made her presence known, but more significantly she put her thinking, creativity, resources to doing, supporting, and amplifying the hard work of changing the built environment. She generously made a place for others, women in particular, to explore how to take the necessary risks to change the built environment in order to make place for others. She modeled who a deeply thoughtful and nurturing and bold and courageous leader can be and do.
Sarah M. Whiting, dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, Harvard GSD; partner, WW Architecture
Beverly Willis was never short on surprises, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised by Jori Finkel’s obituary of Bev in The New York Times, but how could I not be? The photo of her “at a construction site in 1982” is surprising in depicting a female architect high above the city, red hardhat jauntily askew, but that wasn’t all—she’s not wearing white! How un-Bev is that? For in the black-clad architectural world of New York City, Beverly Willis always stood apart—she wore white.
Her white outfits, always pristine, always threw me off guard, as did her white hair, swept back from her face in what I think would be characterized as a bouffant. What would she say if she heard me describe this style as a snow-white Margaret Thatcher? What separated her from the Iron Lady—apart from their obvious differences in politics and priorities—was Bev’s eyes: Even when she wasn’t smiling, which was rare, her eyes were sparkling, daring the world before her.
She dared to do: Architecture is dominated by an old boys’ network? Create a women’s one, or several. Spread the word of their work? Become a filmmaker. While she is well known to be a champion of women’s rights, her doing extended well beyond that horizon: she cofounded the National Building Museum, created the Architecture Research Institute, and developed a computer program, CARLA (the Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis).
And most importantly, she dared others to do. With her kind voice—often laced with a laugh—with that white bouffant and those white clothes, she was, always, surprising: she was, in fact, as direct and forceful as a power drill. What are you/we/all going to do? How can we make the world better? For women, for architecture, for the public, for the next generation? So many aspects of our world are better because of Bev; I’ll miss her prodding, but I’ll never forget it or her.
