Beverly Willis Architects
In 1958, Willis opened Beverly Willis Architects, an architectural office in San Francisco, California. Beverly Willis Architects embraced the industrial design axiom that good design "sells." Retail stores were among the firm's first clients. Widely published in retail trade magazines, Willis became known as one of America's leading store designers. Willis was among the first architects to take advantage of trade publications and direct mail pamphlets to solicit new clients.
As the firm grew to a staff of 35, its projects evolved. Willis became a pioneer in the historic preservation and reuse movement in San Francisco in the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, Beverly Willis Architects was one of the first firms to develop computer software for planning and architectural use. CARLA, Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis, was written and applied in-house. Used in large-scale land use planning projects, 100 to 1,000 acres (0.40 to 4.0 km2) in size, CARLA promoted environmental planning techniques that helped avoid property damage due to flash floods, mudslides and unstable soil, relying on a site's natural terrain to guide building placement. In Honolulu, CARLA was used to plan, engineer and design Aliamanu Valley, a community that housed 11,500 people in 525 buildings.
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“Perchance the time will come when every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room, and talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects will put it into their plans. Let it be furnished and ornamented with whatever conduces to serious and creative thought. I should not object to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it were consecrated by the imagination of the worshipers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)