Charles Willard Moore was an American architect, educator, writer, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991. Charles Willard Moore was born in 1925 in Benton Harbor, Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in architecture in 1947. In the years following graduation, he worked in San Francisco, served two years in the Army Corps of Engineers, and received a Ph.D in architectural history from Princeton University.

He came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the partnership that came to be known as MLTW/Moore Turnbull. In 1966 Moore gained acclaim for his Sea Ranch condominium project in California. The resort featured a style that seemed to reflect its dramatic cliff-side location and one that became popular for many suburban developments. Other important projects included the Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans, La. (1978), and the Alumni Center at the University of California at Irvine, (1983-85). Moore taught at numerous universities and served as the chairman of the architecture departments at the University of California at Berkeley (1962-65) and Yale University (1965-69); from 1985 he held the O’Neil Ford chair in architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He wrote or co-wrote 11 books, notably Body, Memory and Architecture (1978; with Kent Bloomer) and won the prestigious 1991 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects.