Lucia Allais

Lucia Allais is an architectural historian whose work addresses architecture’s relation to technology and politics in the modern period and on the global stage. She holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a MArch from Harvard and a B.S.E from Princeton.  

Allais is associate professor of architecture at Columbia University, a founding member of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and an editor of the journal Grey Room. At Columbia, she is also the director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, where she has led a broad initiative on the theme of “Architecture and Land in and out of the Americas” since 2022.  

Her first book, Designs of Destruction: The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century (2018) shows that today’s global heritage policies arose from mid-century episodes of exceptional destruction. She has written widely on the many ways the built environment affects and reflects changing ideas of historical change. Most recent articles have addressed: how the “carbonation” of reinforced concrete takes part in the image of anthropocenic change; Alois Riegl’s influential theory of mood; and the teachings of Louis Pasteur for artists and architects in the 19th century.  

Allais has received several grants, prizes and fellowships for this work, including from the Graham Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute, the CASVA, and, most recently, a Sarton Medal for the History of Science. She has collaborated with architects on several exhibitions, including “Legible Pompei” at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014) and “100 Links” at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023).