Matthew Allen
Matthew Allen is a writer and historian who studies the relationship between new technologies and aesthetic subcultures in architecture. He holds a PhD and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, and he has worked as an architect for MOS and Preston Scott Cohen. Allen is the author of “Flowcharting: From Abstractionism to Algorithmics in Art and Architecture” (ETH / gta Verlag, 2023), and his writing is regularly published in journals such as Architectural Record, Log, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism. Allen’s research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and other institutions. He is currently working on a book project on the history of architecture, computation, and visual culture in East Asia.
Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications
Flowcharting: From Abstractionism to Algorithmics in Art and Architecture
By the time the computer arrived on the architectural scene, its place had been prepared by decades of avant-gardist experimentation. The modernist program of rationalizing creative practice took a decidedly bureaucratic turn between two generations of constructivists in the 1930s and 1960s. From Paris to Cambridge, painters, poets, designers, and architects poured their energy into cracking the code of artistic genius in hopes of democratizing the creation of better environments, thus stimulating a nascent repertoire of algorithmic techniques. The motivation to use these new techniques emerged from attempts to understand art and architecture through serial effects. By reformulating their disciplines in terms of flowcharting procedures developed in the field of scientific management, artists and architects enacted a paradigm shift that had long been a cherished dream of modernism, replacing composition with organization as the basis of design.
“The Genius of Bureaucracy: SOM’s Hajj Terminal and Geiger Berger Associates’ Form-Finding Software,” in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, v. 80. issue 4. 2024.
“Geometry without Geometers,” in The Avery Review, issue 66. February 2024.
“Gathering Effects: Structuralist Activity in Form, 1966-69,” in Journal of Visual Art Practice, v. 22, issue 2-3. 2023.
“Undoing the Data Divide,” in Log, v. 55. 2022.
“Architecture Becomes Programming: Invisible Technicians, Printouts, and Situated Theories in the 1960s,” in The Figure of Knowledge: Conditioning Architectural Theory, 1960s-1990s, 2020. Edited by Sebastiaan Loosen, Rajexh Heynickx, and Hilde Heynen. Published by Leuven University Press, Belgium.
“Arata Isozaki and the Invisible Technicians,” in Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2016. issue 4.
Select Exhibitions and Presentations
“HOK-net: Corporate Architecture and the Emergence of the Global City,” Matthew Allen; presented at European Architectural History Network (EAHN) International Conference, 2024, Athens, Greece.
“Gathering Effects: Structuralist Activity and Zero Degrees,” Matthew Allen; presented at The zero degree of architectural writing symposium, 2022, Brussels, Belgium.
“Architectural Subcultures and the Ethics of Commitment,” Matthew Allen; presented at the Architectural Humanities Research Association Annual Conference, 2019, Dundee, Scotland.
