Allison Grace Williams amassed an international portfolio of large scale civic, cultural and research buildings in 40 years of practice as a design leader with SOM, Perkins and Will, and AECOM. Respected for her inventive instincts and design leadership, her built work bridges culture, technology, and the environment, and is a narrative on the values and traditions of their audience and place. Notably, her work includes: The August Wilson Center (Pittsburgh PA), The Health and Sciences Campus for Princess Abdulrahman University for Women (Saudi Arabia), CREATE (in Singapore), The US Port of Entry at Calexico (Calexico CA) a GSA Design Excellence Commission, and research laboratories at NASA Langley and NASA Ames.

 

In 2017 Williams founded AGWms_studio as a platform for conceptual design consulting, academic engagement and lecturing, design competitions, frequent design juries and pro bono activities. Current clients include Fair Park First Dallas (with Studio_MLA), University of Illinois, Chicago (New Engineering and Science Building (NESB, a competition won with HDR in 2022, with AGWms_studio as conceptual design partner). Williams is an adjunct lecturer in Architecture at Stanford University's new Doerr School of Sustainability, chaired Harvard GSD’s Visiting Committee for three cycles and was the 2021 Esherick Distinguished Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. Williams has juried the COTE Top Ten Design Awards and numerous AIA Chapter and National Design Awards Juries, was appointed and served on the 2021-2023 AIA Jury of Fellows, and was appointed in 2023 to the Design Advisory Council to select the architect for the new Global War on Terrorism Memorial to be sited on The Mall in Washington DC. In 2019 Williams delivered the keynote address at NOMA’s National Conference in Brooklyn NY.

 

In January 2024, Allison G. Williams: An Architect First (by research author Rebecca W.E. Edmunds, AIA), received the 2024 Kristine Fallon Prize from the International Archive of Women Architects at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.

 

Williams holds an M.Arch from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, a BA in the Practice of Art, also from Berkeley, was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD and was elevated to AIA Fellowship in the AIA 1997. Williams was awarded The Norma Sklarek Award in Architecture by the AIA California Council in 2018.

 

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