ARCHITECTURE

“Allan Ceen has been teaching with the Pantheon Institute since it’s inception in 2009. Before that, he was instrumental in establishing a new course for the previous Penn State “Sede di Roma” Architecture program. Our partnership with Allan and his Studium Urbis goes back to 1990. In all this time of working with Allan, I have had the pleasure to witness the undeniable influence he has had on all our students and the positive impact on their learning that he accomplished.

Allan’s course, Imago Urbis; Roman Cartographic History, was specific to Rome in a way tailored precisely to architecture students coming to Rome. His delivery was scholarly, thorough, incredibly erudite, and wonderfully pragmatically passionate. This is a rare combination. For Allan, his was not his profession, it was his vocation.

The course was taught with a vital, hands active form of physical engagement bordering on physical education; specifically, an urban phys-ed experience. Walking through streets, drawing, mapping, and making environment memories; transposing bodily experience into communicable images are the invigorating insightful moments for all those fortunate enough to be his students.

His love for this city was manifest in every talk and during every walk. Cars were often the brunt of Allan’s negative assessment of the city’s administration, as they diminished the true essence of urbanity – the experience of community in every step through Rome’s “eternal” architecture.

As a researcher, Allan’s manner of inquiry, analyzing and exploring the potential of maps and urban representions, is a research avenue further pursued by more than a few of our graduates who went on to PhD level research and teaching careers.

Allan’s interest in working with other professors in partnership to further students’ understanding is legendary. It was in Allan’s Studium that I met and arranged the first collaboration that led to the formation of the Accademia Adrianea, now hosting the most successful European Master’s program in architecture. Allan’s contributions to our early lectures and his guided walks through Villa Adriana will live on as seminal moments in the Accademia’s academic and institutional journey.

In addition, and on a personal note, Allan, away from the classroom, has been a father figure to so many students and to specific individuals who owe him more than academic gratitude. Having come to know him up close, over all these many years, Allan was essentially a good person. Kind, and instinctively generous with his knowledge, he understood that even scientific insight is a resource best utilized through passionate sharing. Impatient with laziness and stupidity, but open and giving in personal as well as intellectual relations, Allan embodied true com-passion.

Thank you, Allan, here and elsewhere, you will never be forgotten.” – Romolo Martemucci, President of Pantheon Institute