People

Prof Alan Penn

BSc (Hons) MSc Dip. Arch RIBA ARB
Professor of Architectural and Urban Computing

Professor Alan PENN

Alan Penn is Professor of Architectural and Urban Computing at The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London, and Director of the VR Centre for the Built Environment. His research focuses on understanding the way that the design of the built environment affects the patterns of social and economic behaviour of organisations and communities. How is it that architecture and urban design matter for those that inhabit them? In order to investigate these questions he has developed both research methodologies and software tools.
Current research includes the development of agent based simulations of human behaviour, the development of spatio-temporal representations of built environments, investigations of scaling properties of urban spatial networks and the application of these techniques in studies of urban sustainability in the broadest sense, covering social, economic, environmental and institutional dimensions.

Alan Penn is a HEFCE Business Fellow, a founding director of Space Syntax Ltd, a UCL knowledge transfer spin out with a portfolio of over 100 applied projects per year, including whole city masterplans, neighbourhood development plans and individual buildings, a director of UCL Consultants Ltd, and a member of the RIBA's Research and Innovation Committee. He is also Chair of the UoA 30 Architecture & the Built Environment sub-panel for RAE 2008, and a member of Main Panel H. He is lead academic on the £5m Urban Buzz: Building Sustainable Communities knowledge exchange programme which is promoting more sustainable forms of urban development and intensification in London and the greater South East Region of the UK. He is Principal Investigator on the City History and Multi-scale Spatial Master-planning UK-China Research Network, 国际研究网络：城市历史与多尺度的空间整体规划, funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is a trustee of the Shakespeare North Trust, recently shortlisted for Big Lottery funding to build a theatre and arts centre complex, including a replica of Inigo Jones' Cockpit at Court theatre, at Prescot in Lancashire.

Projects

Selected publications available from e-prints

Full list of publications on UCL Database

Contact details:
Prof Alan Penn
(1-19 Torrington Place)
University College London
Gower Street
LONDON
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

Telephone +44 20 7679 5919
Fax +44 20 7916 1887
Email a.penn@ucl.ac.uk

Updated 2 November 2007