Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen is an architectural historian, theorist, and critic whose work examines the relations among architecture, technology, media, and aesthetics. He studies how technical systems and visual forms organize architectural knowledge, labor, and institutions — and how these arrangements change as they circulate across regions. He is the author of “Flowcharting: From Abstractionism to Algorithmics in Art and Architecture” (ETH / gta Verlag, 2023). His current book project examines the digital transformation of architecture in China through archival research, oral-history interviews, and the study of state-owned design institutes, transnational firms, technical labor, and visual culture. It situates architectural computerization within histories of state planning, global exchange, corporate practice, mega-event development, and changing regimes of collective authorship.

Allen’s scholarship offers a cultural and institutional history of computation. Rather than treating digital technologies as autonomous agents of change, he traces the diagrams, standards, organizations, professional practices, and often-invisible forms of labor through which computational ideas take shape. Flowcharting reconstructs the emergence of algorithmic thinking in art and architecture before the widespread adoption of digital computers, showing how techniques derived from scientific management helped shift design from composition toward organization. His more recent work follows the translation of computational methods and aesthetics among institutions, professions, and regions.

His articles and essays have appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Perspectives on Science, Log, The Avery Review, and Architectural Record, among other venues. His research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Graham Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is editorial director of Architecture Exchange, where he co-edits the “Memo: Writing to Architecture” book series and develops public programs connecting architectural scholarship with contemporary debate. He also organizes international research collaborations and writes criticism on contemporary architecture, with particular attention to China.

At WashU, Allen teaches global architectural history, architectural theory, design research, and creative computation. Together with Senior Lecturer Josh Azzarella, he developed Creative Computation, which introduces programming, algorithms, and artificial intelligence as modes of creative inquiry. Across his teaching, Allen connects historical interpretation with contemporary design practice, preparing students to work critically across archives, texts, images, code, and buildings.

Allen earned a PhD and Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Before joining WashU, he taught at Pratt Institute and the University of Toronto and practiced architecture in New York, Boston, Bangkok, and Shanghai.