AVATAR and the politics of Protocell Architecture

The Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research Laboratory (AVATAR) was founded in 2004 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL). The original remit was to provide a forum for staff and their units to exchange and share their explorations into the digital and visceral terrain. With Neil Spiller's appointment in September 2011 as Dean of the School of Architecture and Construction at the University of Greenwich, the centre of research has shifted south to Greenwich. Here, one of the principle proponents of AVATAR, Nic Clear describes why, given the present economic and political situation, Protocell Architecture has provided the group with such a fecund field of research.