IntCDC Constructive Conversations //
Intersectional and Resilient: New Forms of Automation for Architecture

October 4, 2021, 4:30 p.m. (CEST)

Mollie Claypool – The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
IntCDC

Time: October 4, 2021, 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
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We are excited to present Mollie Claypool, Associate Professor in Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

In her talk “Intersectional and Resilient: New Forms of Automation for Architecture” Mollie Claypool will present the work of the Automated Architecture (AUAR) Labs at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, which uses an engaged scholarship approach to transcend disciplinary boundaries of practice and building cultures within new frameworks for automation, radically restructuring understandings of labour, value and expertise in architectural production.

Intersectional and Resilient: New Forms of Automation for Architecture

Mollie Claypool – Associate Professor in Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

4 October 2021   |   4:30-6:30 p.m.

It is vital to radically rethink what is built, and how, to sustain our future. And one of the most imminent threats, and opportunities, for architecture is automation. While there is a need to increase automation in construction due to significant automation gaps, focusing on the potentials of science and technology alone is not the answer. Nor is an exuberance of form which has fallen into conflict with existing building practices, exacerbating existing disparities in building cultures, practices and experiences. Instead, what is needed is an intersectional approach to automation that places at its centre the design of, and vision for, collective resilience – across disciplines, but most importantly, across lived experiences and subjectivities. 

Mollie Claypool, Block West, AUAR Labs, 2020 Image © NAARO

Learning from the social visions common to the 1960s and 1970s, automation can be reframed as a design project. Automation as a design project enables the navigation of a terrain where scientific knowledge and the material production of technologies can be knotted into socio-political processes and imaginaries. When framed in this way, automation can become an arena through which issues such as ownership, distribution and cultures of automation in architectural production can be discussed. These are shared and global issues that transcend places, cultures and contexts. 

 

Block West, AUAR Labs, 2020, Image © NAARO

Mollie Claypool is an architecture theorist, consultant, writer and educator. She is Director of Automated Architecture Ltd (AUAR), a design and technology consultancy in the UK, Co-Director of Automated Architecture Labs at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and History & Theory Coordinator in the MArch Architectural Design postgraduate programme in B-Pro. Her work broadly focuses on issues of social justice highlighted by increasing automation in architecture and design production, such as the future of work, housing, platforms, localised manufacturing and circular economies. She lives in Bristol, UK with her partner and young child.

 

AdvanceAEC  – Join this and further AdvanceAEC Partner Seminars and receive an AdvanceAEC certificate!

This lecture is part of the AdvanceAEC partner Seminar Series. From October 2021 to September 2022 eight Partner Seminars will take place. Partner Seminars focus on cross-sectional and interdisciplinary topics and are open to all network partners. If you attend at least six of the eight seminars, you will receive a certificate of time attendance. You will have to register for this at the beginning of each event. The procedure for this will be briefly explained before each seminar.

The access data is restricted to AdvanceAEC members. All researchers working in the field of AdvanceAEC are warmly invited to join the network. Please register or log in to access the event credentials.

 

 

 

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