Allen is a Philadelphia-based architect, builder and scholar. Allen is Principal at HEIMA, a small craft practice doing work in Philadelphia, NYC, and the Hudson and Delaware Valleys. Supplementing design and construction work, Allen also teaches design studios at Temple University's Tyler College of Art and Architecture and produces original scholarship on design, building and embodied experience.
Allen’s academic training in philosophy (Rhodes College) and architecture (Georgia Tech) are met by a lifetime of direct experience with wood and metalwork. Allen continues to develop, present and publish scholarly work, most recently working to connect Ivan Illich's concept of "conviviality" to design and construction.
In his free time, Allen enjoys reading in the sun, extemporaneous cooking, hand tool carpentry, following the Northeast's brilliant young composers, and exploring the city on foot. A great lover of slow, engaged travel, Allen has studied in Oxford, lived as a design writer in Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin, and most recently participated in an extended design-research workshop in Mexico City.
HEIMA architecture / design, Philadelphia, PA, US, Principal
Allen Pierce, Architect is an architecture and design practice centered on small, high-craft projects across the Northeast with a focus on developing rich and varied personal experiences through considered materiality and an understanding of a project’s place and time. Our practice is founded in depth of engagement: with our clients’ lives, with their sites, with the materials that come to shape their spaces and with the processes by which those spaces are built. The practice is made up of a rotating cast of supporting talents from up and down the coast, each of whom brings a unique skillset to select projects in support of principal Allen Pierce’s core competencies.
We have deep experience as designer-makers, moving fluidly from paper to workshop, screen to site. Our strong connections to a community of like-minded builders ensures that projects are not only well conceived but also well executed. This focus on delivery is facilitated by our experience with the idiosyncrasies of the existing built environment and its myriad systems, stemming from work within a variety of historic structures: Central Park towers, South Philly row homes, Appalachian cow barns. Our commitment to excellence in design and construction dovetails with our investment in client experience, tailoring the process of working with an architect to fit each client’s circumstances and personality as aptly as the spaces that will ultimately share their lives.
Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, GA, US, MArch, Architecture
