Building with Writing: Stan Allen

Building with Writing is an exhibition of selected work by Stan Allen. In this exhibition, there are 48 drawings from 12 buildings and 12 pieces of writing, (re)presented as pamphlets. Writing and design are distinct yet parallel practices for Stan; usually kept separate, it felt important to exhibit Stan’s writing and buildings together, next to each other. Everything is presented on folded metal bookstands–something between a bookcase, a medieval scribe desk, and vernacular pitched roofs. The metal bookstands make a reading room with seating for students and visitors. The writings and drawings together make a book to circulate after the exhibition is over. People can read the writing. People can look at the drawings. Architecture can happen somewhere between. Writing provides context for building. Building provides context for writing. Complex. Contradictory. Stan surveys the field. Sometimes Stan writes about architects he likes. He’s written about 30 different architecture offices, which is a lot. There is a wonderful, selfish generosity in writing about others. Writing can tether different people, things, and moments together. Writing can construct an ecology. It’s unclear whether writing actually helps architectural practice. A diagram exists somewhere showing the inverse relationship: the more an architect writes, the less they build. That said, whatever Stan writes, there is an understanding that writing is to be used, it is something to work with, it is part of an architect’s toolkit. Pragmatism. Pedagogy. Writing is not for its own sake. Writing builds life into inanimate objects. We wouldn’t have architecture without writing. We wouldn’t have architecture without buildings. Stan’s writing offers a point of view, a constructive material for others to build from–an urbanism, a landscape, a landform, a specific object, something part of a larger ecology. Sometimes, it widens our focus onto the field and its conditions, but writing is not about a building in solitude. 

Building with Writing is exhibited at Princeton University School of Architecture, North Gallery, and runs from March 6th to May 2nd, 2025. Accompanying the exhibition is a podcast, also called Building with Writing, focused around Stan Allen’s work and a broader discussion about the relationship between architecture and writing. The podcast includes conversations with Stan Allen, Diana Agrest, Liz Diller, Mario Gandelsonas, Mark Lee, Greg Lynn, Michael Meredith, Monica Ponce de Leon, Jesse Reiser, and Hilary Sample.  

Curator: Michael Meredith / Exhibition Design: MOS / Graphic Design: Studio Lin / Exhibition Manager: Kira McDonald / Special Thanks: Dean Monica Ponce de Leon, Bruce Liang, Kaleb Swanson, Masa Crilley, Chad Miller, Leti Ryder, Tianyu Zhang, Princeton SoA Staff.

Free and open to the public.