Carol Willis

The Skyscraper Museum, President | New York City, United States

About

Carol Willis is the founder, director, and curator of The Skyscraper Museum. An architectural and urban historian, she has researched, taught, and written about the history of American city building. She is the author of Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (Princeton Architectural Press, 1995: 2008), which received an AIA book award and was named ""Best Book on North American Urbanism, 1995"" by the Urban History Association. Critic Herbert Muschamp has praised Ms. Willis in The New York Times as ""the brilliant and energetic woman who created the Skyscraper Museum in 1996 from nothing but her imagination, her passion for New York architecture, and her belief in the importance of history and the value of the public realm.""

Ms. Willis is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Columbia University where since 1989 she has taught in the program The Shape of Two Cities: New York and Paris in The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning. From 1979 to 1991 she taught courses on the history of architecture at Parsons School of Design in New York and for eleven summers conducted walking tours on the history of French architecture for Parsons in Paris.

Before establishing The Skyscraper Museum, Ms. Willis was guest curator for exhibits on the architects Raymond Hood and Hugh Ferriss. In conjunction with the exhibit Hugh Ferriss: Metropolis, she oversaw the facsimile reprint of the delineator’s 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow, contributing a historical essay on Ferriss and appendices (published by Princeton Architectural Press; reprinted in 1998). In addition to articles in books and scholarly journals, Ms. Willis is the editor for Building the Empire State, a book on the construction of New York's signature skyscraper, published by W.W. Norton in 1998. Her exhibitions at The Skyscraper Museum include Building the Empire State, Design Development: Times Square, Big Buildings, City of Change, Favorites, Green Towers for New York, Giants: The Twin Towers and the Twentieth Century, World’s Tallest Building: Burj Dubai and New York Modern. She has written introductions to numerous monographs and collections, including Skyscraper Rivals, New York Architecture, Manhattan Skyscrapers, and New York Deco, and has appeared in numerous national and international television documentaries and radio broadcasts, including programs for The History Channel, PBS, A & E. and BBC Television, NPR, and BBC World Service Radio.

As an undergraduate, Ms. Willis majored in Art History at Boston University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1971. She did her graduate work in architectural history at Columbia University in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, receiving an M.A. in 1976 and M.Phil. in 1979. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards.

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CTBUH Designated Expert

CTBUH Roles

Past Roles

Awards Jury (2005; 2008)

Annual Conference, Keynote Speaker (Shanghai 2014)

Annual Conference, Presenter (Chicago 2009; New York 2015; China 2016; Chicago 2019)

Annual Conference, Session Chair (2016)

CTBUH Initiatives

CTBUH 2019 Global Walking Tour: 50 Forward | 50 Back

27 June 2019

Sydney Skyscraper Summit

18 August 2017

Skyscraper Summit Warms Sydney Up for CTBUH 2017

18 August 2017

Videos

20 December 2016

CTBUH 2016 China Conference - Plenary 7: Technical & Social Issues Q&A

Thursday October 20, 2016. Hong Kong, China. Vijay Jayachandran of Otis Elevator Company; Carol Willis of The Skyscraper Museum in New York City; Ada Y.S....

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Research

28 October 2019

World’s Biggest (Tall) Buildings

Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

In both professional circles and in the public eye, the subject of the World’s Tallest Building (WTB) has held the spotlight for more than a...

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Research

17 October 2016

Singularly Slender: Sky Living in New York, Hong Kong, and Elsewhere

Carol Willis, The Skyscraper Museum

This paper highlights a new 21st-century skyscraper typology – the very tall and slender residential tower – and analyzes the economic, engineering, and urbanistic forces...

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Carol Willis

About

CTBUH Designated Expert

CTBUH Roles

Past Roles

CTBUH Initiatives

Videos

Research

Research

CTBUH Initiatives

Videos

Monthly Video Series

Video Interviews

Conference Presentations

Awards Symposium & Dinner Videos

CTBUH Leader Presentations & Meetings

Other Videos

Webinars

Research