Stuckeman School to host UK architecture startup co-founders

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School will host Mollie Claypool and Gilles Retsin, co-founders of Automated Architecture Ltd. (AUAR), a design and technology company based in the U.K., for a virtual lecture at noon on Feb. 8 as part of the school’s Lecture and Exhibit Series.

In the lecture, titled “Automating Architecture: Architecture in Large Numbers,” Claypool and Retsin will discuss their work using robotics and automation to provide high-quality, sustainable affordable housing. They will explore how robotics, artificial intelligence and automation can enable architecture to meaningfully engage with global crises, such as the climate and ecological crisis and housing inequity.

The company is a spinoff of AUAR Labs at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, where Claypool and Retsin are associate professors.

Claypool, CEO of AUAR, is the history and theory coordinator of the master of architecture in architectural design program at the Bartlett School. She has been a visiting professor at the Cluster for Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and was a faculty member at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

Claypool is the managing editor of “Prospectives,” an open access peer-reviewed journal supported by the Bartlett School. She co-wrote “Robotic Building: Architecture in the Age of Automation'' and authored the SPACE10 report, “The Digital in Architecture: Then, Now and in the Future.” 

The design work and critical discourse of Retsin, who is the chief technology officer and chief architect at AUAR, have been internationally recognized through awards, lectures and exhibitions at major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Royal Academy in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. 

He has edited books on architecture, computational design and robotics. He studied architecture in Belgium, Chile and the U.K., where he graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Co-hosted by the Department of Architecture, the lecture will be presented via Zoom.