The Ethical Imperative 587 Systems and Others: Inclusion and Agency in Willis and Associates’ CARLA Platform MEREDITH SATTLER California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo Twenty years before the ‘Digital Turn,’ the architecture firm process affords a reexamination of our discipline’s current of Beverly Willis and Associates innovated the Computerized relationships to production as informed by its conceptualiza- Approach to Residential Land Analysis (CARLA) workflow. tion of relationships between systemic ecologies, inclusion, CARLA captured a range of non-human others, within a agency, tooling, politics, and ethics. systems-based environmental design process, developed to optimize the cost and environmental impact of large- CARLA converged in response to an entanglement of scale residential development in challenging hillslope American cultural crises. Each year of the early 1970’s sites. Emerging from the confluence of environmental brought increasing economic, political, and environmental ethics, novel policy, economic depression, and the dawn strife which had grave implications for the practice of archi- of Computer Assisted Overlay Mapping, CARLA not only tecture. Skyrocketing inflation and unemployment were redefined the firm’s scope of services to attract large devel- unsuccessfully curtailed by “Nixon Shock” economic policies, oper driven projects such as Oahu’s Aliamanu Community game-changing U.S. EPA environmental regulation rapidly for Military Housing project, which produced 2,600 units altered business protocols, and in 1971 housing starts “… of housing, safely, within a volcanic caldera, but simultane- reached a rate of 2,235,000 units, their highest level in the ously prototyped complex systemic computational design postwar period.”1 Simultaneously, nonresidential construc- strategies years ahead of their ubiquitous use within design tion was declining. In 1973 the Oil Embargo created a perfect firms. In the 1970’s, CARLA leveraged the use of ‘big data’ economic storm that brought the construction industry, along and algorithms in the design process thereby rehearsing with most others, to a screeching halt. “The result was a seri- contemporary ethical debates surrounding agency in sys- ous recession during the 1970’s that decimated if not closed tems thinking and inclusion, through the strategic formation many architectural offices.”2 From 1970 to 1972 Willis’s firm of a hybrid digital-analog, and ultimately political, design averaged approximately 40 projects on their books per year, platform. in 1973 the firm was down to 19 and in 1974 they bottomed out at 8.3 FROM STATES TO SYSTEMS In 1978 enlisted Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel Starting in the late 1960’s, Willis was keenly aware of her and their families began moving into the newly constructed firm’s, and the nation’s, increasing economic vulnerability. Aliamanu Valley Community for Military Family Housing which While a defensive strategy, incorporating environmental sat within an inactive volcanic caldera near Pearl Harbor, risk mitigation, fueled her desire to diversify the portfolio Hawai’i. Aside from its unique site, on the surface this 542 of services offered by WAI, her entrepreneurial spirit wel- acre, 2,600 residential unit development appeared similar comed forays into a series of extra-disciplinary endeavors to countless others constructed in the U.S. between the late which not only enriched office culture but also provided 1950’s and 1980’s, despite the fact that it was the first built enough work to keep her employees on payroll.4 She had community predominantly designed using computational been working on several novel market-defining products code. Yet it’s precisely the caldera’s unstable sloping site that that leveraged environmental, economic, and emergent initially drove the project’s radical means of production, from computational technologies which created options and design through construction. Beverly Willis and Associates’ efficiencies previously unexperienced in the profession. As Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis, affec- opportunities presented themselves, WAI nimbly choreo- tionately known as CARLA, facilitated the integration and graphed hardware, software, and novel architectural design analysis of diverse environmental conditions while evaluating process into CARLA, which ultimately forecast and rehearsed their impacts on overall project costs and performance, with three significant current modes of architectural production: nearly real-time feedbacks. The project couldn’t have been data-driven design, parametric design, and systems design produced within its very reasonable $115 million (1975 dollar) processes. Anticipating what Pierre Bélanger has identi- budget and tight time frame without CARLA, which generated fied as the “…moment when environmentalism began to fail rapid iterations, effectively prototyping systemic parametric and ecology emerged between the ‘70’s and ‘90’s.”5 CARLA design process the likes of which we still struggle to leverage ultimately wavered between these environmentalism and systemically in architectural production today. Revisiting the ecological paradigms, utilizing early computational tech- development of CARLA’s computationally driven production nologies to incorporate the agency of non-human others via 588 The Next Digital Turn: Identifying Inequalities Willis was no stranger to politics and the larger San Francisco business community. She had to be as “…the only woman in San Francisco with her own firm…She spent time with developers, businessmen and political figures, as well as with architects, and she inevitably entered the architecture of politics and planning.”7 Willis initiated a pro-bono relationship with state officials to contribute to the development of urgently needed protocols which ultimately became the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) administrative procedures.8 She soon became head of the Facility Council.9 At the time, Willis lacked the comprehensive environmen- tal knowledge necessary to ensure that overarching CEQA goals remained intact through new design and approvals processes. But she proved an intuitive systems thinker, studying and synthesizing geology, biology, ecology, and economics to better understand the larger picture of CEQA’s intent.10 Later she would write: “The various participants [in the Environmental Design profession] tend to look myopically at the system Figure 1: Environmental Impact Report Impact Detail Matrix: WAI’s EIR parts (elements) and see only the ‘parts’ within their Analysis of Environmental and Project Characteristics - Ms1992-019, own sphere of activity. However, each has an impact Special Collections, University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University on the other. Because of this myopic viewpoint, some- times various elements work against each other…[this] the development of probabilistic code to optimize grading, often hampers and restricts environmental protection siting, civil, space planning, and costing of large scale resi- rather than enhancing and protecting it.”11 dential developments within hillslope topographies. These topographies had proven problematic for large-scale subur- Willis’s after hours work on the EIA ultimately had a ban residential developers for over 25 years, particularly in profound effect on the firm’s production and scope of California. At the time CARLA was significantly more efficient services, which were welcomed by many of Willis’s native than the analogue planning and architectural workflows of California employees who shared her environmental ethos. the day, minimizing project risk, maximizing project budgets, WAI developed internal office procedures for authoring providing more client control in the decision making process, Environmental Impact Reports (EIR’s), and included EIR’s and providing WAI a significant competitive edge during a within the scope of their work, both at the initiation of severe economic downturn. their projects, and as a stand-alone service. Not only was the EIA service a novel product in the market space, gen- RETOOLING CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENTAL erating additional revenue and notoriety for the firm, it FEEDBACKS also facilitated the immediate State permitting approvals In 1970, in astoundingly rapid succession the Federal of WAI projects. Government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the EPA was founded, and the State of California’s But its effect was far more structural in its shift of the Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was legislated. These regu- firm’s conceptual underpinnings about design’s relation- lations were astonishing in their ambition and scope, and upon ship with the environment. Projects were conceived and coming into force they proved challenging regulatory cocktails, ultimately initiated through increasingly environmental particularly problematic to implement and enforce. Willis’s frameworks which went well above and beyond CEQA San Francisco based firm was situated near the front line of regulation requirements. They included analysis of feed- CEQA. “Six of our major multifamily projects were put on hold backs between 63 environmental issues, sensitivities, and by the California legislation. To avoid bankruptcy and to get impacts ranging from existing site and biotic character- permits for our projects, I met with state officials and learned istics to socio-economic settings. Flow-chart diagrams they had not developed guidelines by which to evaluate proj- guided project designers