Assistant Professor Matthew Allen recently had three articles published: one in Contemporaneity and two in Harvard Design Magazine.

“Flying Buttresses” and “Artificial Natures” were both published in the Summer 2015 edition of Harvard Design Magazine. “Artificial Natures” is an interview with George Church, and is available online, http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/40/artificial-natures.

“Compelled by the Diagram: Thinking through C. H. Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape” was published in the August 2015 edition of Contemporaneity.

From the article’s abstract:

"Between 1940 and about 1960, Conrad Hal Waddington produced several illustrations to explain a concept central to his theories of developmental biology. The concet Waddington explained, the epigenetic landscape, was not based on settled science, and its implications were not easy to grasp. Unlike proponents of the most successful contemporary biological theory, Waddington was committed to including all biological phenomena – no matter how complex or unusual – in a single theoretical system. His intellectual style and use of images matched his ambition. Waddington used compelling images to get his readers to engage with and work through his theories. His images used a shifting, even contradictory, set of metaphors and analogical models, from train yards to crafted topological surfaces. Through an analysis of Waddington’s images and theories, I show that taking a close look at what scientific images show and how they show it is important for the historiography of science. Images can be effective at drawing viewers in, confounding them, and prodding them to ask questions; this is one reason images are necessary for science."

For the full article, visit http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/contemporaneity/article/v…

Matthew Allen is an architect and writer. He has an M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and degrees in Physics and the Comparative History of Ideas, and he has worked previously in the video game and bioengineering industries.

Prior to teaching, Allen worked at several internationally-recognized firms, most recently for Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., on a number of award-winning projects in China. His expertise in design spans the intricately geometric, the flexibly parametric, and the complicatedly situated.