The National Building Arts Center is excited to announce that its Board has appointed Michael Allen as Executive Director, starting September 1. Michael has been serving as President of the Board since June 2021, but he actually has been involved since before the project was called NBAC. Starting out ironing drawings from the Guth Lighting Company as an intern in 2004, Michael worked as a part-time assistant when the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation (precursor to NBAC) purchased the Sterling Steel Casting plant. He joined the Board of Directors in 2009.

For the last 13 years, Michael has been director of the Preservation Research Office, a consultancy that has worked on historic preservation projects in 11 US states. In 2018, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Michael to its “40 Under 40” list of young preservation leaders. Michael will take on the role at NBAC half-time while maintaining his academic position at Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis. Michael continues to work on Housing Blocs, an international collaborative research project on public housing in the US and post-socialist Europe as well as his doctoral dissertation and (hopefully) finishing restoring the wooden windows on his 1910 house in St. Louis’ Dutchtown neighborhood.