BEVERLY WILLIS
Architect, Artist and Philanthropist, New York

Fabricating Architectural Identities

Monday, December 3rd
4:30 pm, 104 Bond Hall

Sponsored by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation with support from Notre Dame's Student Association for Women in Architecture

Pizza and Pop provided

Beverly Willis, FAIA, will explore the ways that architects’ identities, including her own, have been formed and produced. According to Willis, some architects' identities are self-controlled, like that of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who adopted the pseudonym “Le Corbusier” (The Crow) to lend himself a certain mystique. Others are forged by the media --- Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark from The Fountainhead --- renders an image so clear the fictitious architect is often mistaken to be alive and practicing. Yet other identities are political. In our age, when collaborative work is often supplanting the star system, and the image of a woman architect is changing, a careful examination of how identity is fabricated is a pre-requisite for anyone aspiring to practice. Ms. Willis is an architect, artist, author and philanthropist who began her career in 1954 in Hawaii as a painter and multi-media artist. By 1958, when she moved to San Francisco, she expanded her practice to include industrial and architectural design. Architecture increasingly took over her work, and by 1966 Willis had obtained her architectural license, and a decade later was running the 35-person firm, Willis and Associates, Inc. Architects. For Willis, architectural practice has always embraced multiple approaches: whether designing residential or civic structures, pioneering adaptive re-use to revitalize downtown commercial zones, or innovating technology-driven land-use planning. Her most famous building is the San Francisco Ballet Building in the City Civic Center. Willis served as the first female president of the California Council of American Institute of Architects which governs 22 California chapters including San Francisco and Los Angeles. Willis has held leadership roles on the national level such as serving on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on Habitat I, as well as serving on the executive committee of the National Academy of Science’s Board on Infrastructure and Constructed Environment. Willis is a founding trustee of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2002, she founded the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

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