Beverly Willis
| Beverly Willis | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
February 17, 1928 Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Hawaii |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | Manhattan Village Academy: New York, New York San Francisco Ballet Building: San Francisco, California Union Street Shops: San Francisco, California Yerba Buena Gardens: San Francisco, California Aliamanu Valley Community: Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Projects | Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis: CARLA |
Beverly Willis FAIA (born February 17, 1928) is an American architect who played a major role in the development of many architectural concepts and practices that influenced the design of American cities and architecture. Willis' achievements in the development of new technologies in architecture, urban planning, public policy and her leadership activities on behalf of architects are well known. Her best known built-work is the San Francisco Ballet Building in San Francisco, California. She is the co-founder of the National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C., and founder of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, a non-profit organization working to change the culture for women in the building industry through research and education.
Willis was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, daughter of Margaret Elizabeth Porter, a nurse, and Ralph William Willis, an oil industry entrepreneur and an agriculturalist. Willis' brother, Ralph Gerald Willis (1930–1999), served in the United States Army and later retired to the Fiji Islands.
During World War II, at age 15, Willis learned to fly a single-engine propeller plane in order to qualify for the Women's Air Service. Willis then moved with her mother, now divorced, to Portland, Oregon, where Willis graduated from high school. Willis studied engineering at Oregon State University from 1946–48. She graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1954 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors.
After graduating from the University of Hawaii, Willis founded the Willis Atelier in Waikiki, where she continued the mural and fresco work begun in college under the training of Jean Charlot. In Charlot’s studio, Willis was introduced to the geometric and organic connections between art and nature, analyzing plants, buds, and flowers to discover nature’s intrinsic geometry. This understanding of the relationship between geometry, nature, and beauty would later influence her humanistic design approach to architecture.
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