Allison G. Williams, FAIA: A Brief Biography

0Allison G. Williams is a design principal with Perkins+Will and design director for the San Francisco office. In a career spanning more than 30 years in corporate practice, Williams’s leadership in the design of large scale civic, corporate, and cultural facilities has influenced significant projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, nationally and internationally.

0Her diverse portfolio of work includes the August Wilson Center for African American Culture (Pittsburgh, 2009) and CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise) a 700,000-gross-square-foot research center for the National Research Foundation (Singapore, 2010), two prestigious design competitions won by Perkins+Will under her design direction. Additionally Perkins+Will was awarded a GSA Design Excellence Commission for the Calexico Port of Entry, (Calexico, Calif., at Mexicali, Mexico, 2011), and the Computational Research and Theory Facility for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, 2010) both currently on the boards under Williams’s leadership. Williams is currently designing a 3MSF Health Sciences and Research Campus for a New University for 40,000 Saudi women in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of an overall campus being designed by Perkins+Will.

0Additional work includes corporate headquarters for Freddie Mac (MacLean, Va.), America Online (Loudon, Va.), Allergan, Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) and condominium high-rises in Oakland, the Essex at Lake Merritt and the Ellington at Jack London Square. To her credit prior to Perkins+Will (while an associate partner in design with Skidmore Owings & Merrill) are civic landmarks including the New International Terminal in San Francisco, the San Francisco Civic Center Complex, 88 Kearny (originally San Francisco Savings & Loan Headquarters) and the Library of Virginia in Richmond, Va.

0Williams is committed to a collaborative design approach that seamlessly integrates aesthetics, efficiency, sustainable strategies, and modern technologies. Identity in architecture is a refined sensibility that touches on traditional values, culture, and environmental awareness. Conceptually buildings should be primarily expressive of program and use, and directly responsive to the climate, the specific site, and to the influence of the sun.

0Williams was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design and received the Masters of Architecture and Bachelor of Art in the Practice of Art degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. Williams was elevated to Fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1997. She currently sits on the Harvard Design Magazine Practitioners Board, Public Architecture Board of Directors, and the University of California Design Review for Capital Projects. Williams is the corporate leader for Perkins+Will’s Social Responsibility Initiative.

0Articles featuring Williams’s professional accomplishments have been published in US News and World Report, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Herald Tribune, Ebony and Black Enterprise as well as numerous local newspapers.