
Edward Allen, FAIA Emeritus, an educator, practitioner, and author known for his ability to captivate architects, engineers, and students alike with his understanding of how buildings work, died on July 7 in Wayland, Mass. Allen was 81. His death was due to complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to his obituary.
A longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Allen was a popular speaker at institutions worldwide. In 2005, Allen received the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education from AIA and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. He also authored or co-authored 10 seminal books, including the Fundamentals of Building Construction (Wiley, 2019), now in its seventh edition.
Born in 1938 in St. Paul, Minn., Allen received his B.Arch from the University of Minnesota and M.Arch. from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduating, he practiced for two years at the influential firm then known as Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whittaker. From 1966 to 1967, he studied Italy’s trulli houses, constructed of limestone masonry dry-stacked up to their conical roofs, on a Fulbright research grant, during which he authored his first book, Stone Shelters (MIT Press, 1969). From 1968 to 1983, he served on the MIT Department of Architecture faculty, covering structural design and building materials and construction. During this time, he revolutionized the pedagogy of building technology, which is often taught in courses tangential to, rather than in connection with, architectural design and studio. Allen “presented building technology as integral with form and space and established a hands-on laboratory for his course in construction materials and methods,” states AIArchitect's December 2014 announcement of Allen’s receipt of the Topaz Medallion.
In 1997, Allen was named the Pietro Belluschi distinguished visiting professor in architectural design at the University of Oregon. In 2000, Allen was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows. He then returned to MIT as a lecturer in 2003 and 2005. On a personal note, I met Allen at MIT in 2005 and still keep a copy of Shaping Structures: Statics (Wiley, 1997) within arm’s reach.
Allen is survived by his wife Mary, with whom he established the Edward and Mary Allen Fund in Structural Design at MIT in 2012 to “support activities and teaching that will improve the ability of architects and engineers to design efficient, economical, and expressive structures,” according to an remembrance published by MIT News. In that article, former MIT School of Architecture + Planning dean Adèle Santos, FAIA, notes, “Ed’s books are on my bookshelves in my studio and are an essential source for any architectural practice.”
Randy Deutsch, FAIA, clinical professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture, honored Allen in a series of tweets, which included a link to a transcript of Allen’s keynote for the inaugural meeting of the Building Technology Educators’ Society in August 2006. In it, Allen begins by lamenting “‘the gap,’ that huge, bottomless gulf that exists in the schools between the design studios and the technical courses.” After noting he had ruminated on its root causes at some length—dryly adding, “That’s the advantage of getting old”—he concluded that the gap could be bridged if educators aligned on a common goal. “For me, the essence of building technology, the concern that should be the primary focus of all of our courses is ‘GETTING THE FORM RIGHT,‘“ he said. “Get the form right and the rest is easy.”
This story has been updated since first publication.