RIBA Research Trust Award for Clay Robotics Project

Bartlett PhD graduate and MArch GAD tutor Dr Guan Lee and Slade artist and researcher Dr Eleanor Morgan have been awarded a prestigious RIBA Research Trust Award for their project 'Clay Robotics: Sustainable practice in a digital world'. The practice-led research project will reconsider the extraction and use of local clay deposits by combining traditional expertise with robotic technologies. Focusing on the geological and cultural sites of clay beds in Buckinghamshire, the aim of the project is to advance sustainable and site-responsive architecture.

Based at Grymsdyke Farm research facility, which was founded by Lee, the pair will work with local communities and expert practitioners and researchers to identify ways in which robotic clay dispensers can work with traditional building methods.

Dr Guan Lee completed his PhD by Design in 2013 at The Bartlett. His practice engages in a wide range of digital and analogue design fabrication. Its aim is to expose, articulate and demonstrate the essential connections between processes of design, making and place. Dr Eleanor Morgan is an artist and researcher based at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. She has significant experience in facilitating successful collaborative research projects using practice-led methods, and carried out much of her doctoral research and training within the UCL Department of Anthropology, with a focus on material culture. 

The RIBA Research Trust Awards are offered annually to support independent architectural research in a wide range of subject matter relevant to the advancement of architecture and the connected arts and sciences. The research can be practice-led or academic.

Further information:
RIBA website
Grymsdyke Farm website
The Guardian