Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is an architectural historian and theorist whose work examines architecture as a media system. His research focuses on how diagrams, computational techniques, and visual formats produce, organize, and circulate architectural knowledge. Working at the intersection of architectural history, media theory, and contemporary practice, he develops new accounts of computation that foreground institutions, labor, and representation rather than technology alone.

Allen is the author of “Flowcharting: From Abstractionism to Algorithmics in Art and Architecture” (ETH / gta Verlag, 2023), which reconstructs the emergence of algorithmic thinking through diagrammatic practices in art and architecture prior to digital computation. His current book project, “Circuits of Design: Computation and Architecture in East Asia” (in preparation), traces the global circulation of computational techniques, arguing that the digital transformation of architecture is best understood through transnational exchanges, bureaucratic systems, and material infrastructures rather than through narratives of innovation or authorship.

His scholarly articles and essays have appeared in venues including the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Perspectives on Science, Log, Avery Review, and Architectural Record. Across this work, Allen advances a distinctive account of computation as a distributed cultural and institutional formation — one that encompasses software, standards, corporate organizations, and “invisible technicians” as much as designers or machines.

Allen’s research has been supported by major grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Graham Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others. He is also active as a critic and editor, currently serving as editorial director of Architecture Exchange, where he contributes to shaping emerging forms of architectural discourse across academic and public audiences.

At WashU, Allen teaches a sequence of courses that integrate global architectural history, critical theory, and computation. His survey course on world architecture from antiquity to the modern era situates canonical developments within a comparative global framework, with sustained attention to Chinese, Islamic, and South Asian traditions alongside Europe and America. In advanced seminars on post-1968 theory, students work directly with primary texts — from postmodernism to contemporary debates on AI, labor, and media — to develop research agendas and critical positions within the discipline. His seminar Degrowth: Theories of Design for an Abundant World engages architecture’s future under conditions of ecological constraint, examining adaptive reuse, planetary systems, and alternative economic models. Together with Josh Azzarella, he has developed Creative Computation, a foundational course that introduces programming, algorithms, and artificial intelligence as tools for creative and architectural inquiry, with an emphasis on generative design, parametric systems, and multi-modal AI workflows. Across these courses, Allen positions students to engage critically and technically with the global transformations reshaping architecture today.

Allen earned his doctorate and Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he studied architectural history and theory alongside science and technology studies. Prior to joining WashU, he held teaching positions at the Pratt Institute, University of Toronto, and University of Waterloo, and worked professionally as an architectural designer in New York, Boston, and Shanghai.