As founding director of Cornell’s Housing Research Center, Glenn Beyer helped establish an interdisciplinary, multi-college research focus on the socioeconomic aspects of housing and achieved a position of national leadership and international stature in the field of housing. 

His research and advocacy followed his belief that housing should be user-centered and customizable — designed by collaborative, multidisciplinary teams to account for peoples’ physical as well as psychological needs. 

Beyer received a bachelor’s degree from Augustana University in South Dakota. After receiving his master’s degree from the George Washington University in 1937, he worked for the federal government, including serving as economic and housing analyst for the Federal Housing Administration. He joined the College of Home Economics’ Department of Housing and Design in 1947 and helped establish a strong research focus in the socioeconomic aspects of housing. 

Beyer was project lead on a five-year, multidisciplinary initiative to develop a prefab, mass-market, easy-to-install kitchen that would meet the needs of post-war home kitchen users — from technical requirements to aesthetic and emotional satisfaction. 

He was active in housing issues at the national and international level. In 1961 alone, he led an International Cooperative Administration mission to Venezuela and studied housing for the elderly in 12 European countries on a grant from the Ford Foundation. In 1964-65, he was part of the Ford Foundation mission to India to advise on national housing policy. 

A prolific writer, he was the author of six books, including Housing the Aged in Western Countries, Housing and Society and The Urban Explosion in Latin America. He died in 1969.