Adeline Stals is an architect by training, holds a PhD in architecture and urban planning, and is the founder of Airplan. Her career brings together three strands that now form the DNA of the software: architectural practice, research into how architecture firms work, and the digital transformation of the sector.
Through Airplan, she puts her expertise at the service of architects to simplify the preparation of permit applications, reduce the administrative burden and make day-to-day procedures run more smoothly.
Expertise rooted in architects’ day-to-day reality
From the start of her career, Adeline Stals has worked where practice meets innovation. Her experience spans real architectural projects, project management and scientific research.
Her outlook has grown from a simple conviction: digital tools should adapt to the reality of architecture practices, not the other way round. This is especially true for small practices, which make up the vast majority of the market and need tools that are useful, clear and immediately applicable.
This approach drives the development of Airplan: software designed to help architects save time, reduce errors and put their applications together with greater peace of mind.
Architecture, research and digital transformation
Adeline Stals holds a PhD in architecture and urban planning from the University of Liège. Her thesis examined emerging digital practices in small architecture firms, with a particular focus on perceptions and uses of parametric modelling.
Her research looks at the cognitive and organisational changes that come with bringing digital tools into architectural practice. In other words: how architects work, how their methods evolve, and how the right tools can genuinely improve their daily work.
This academic expertise complements her professional practice as an independent architect, focused mainly on housing, renovation, extensions, conversions, new builds and interior design.
The origins of Airplan
Adeline founded Airplan in 2022 with a clear ambition: to save architects valuable time when preparing planning permit applications.
Airplan was born of a detailed understanding of the field: administrative complexity, repetitive tasks, changing regulations and the difficulty of putting together a complete application without spending a disproportionate amount of energy on it.
Under her leadership, Airplan keeps evolving to reflect the realities of practice: new forms, digitised annexes, recommendations based on geodata, help with checking completeness, online editing of certain documents in the application, and growing automation of document production.
A view of the profession focused on usefulness
The common thread in Adeline Stals’s career is practical usefulness. Whether she is designing an architectural project, supporting a practice’s digital transformation or developing Airplan, her goal remains the same: to offer sound, rigorous answers that can be put to use straight away.
Her work rests on a rare combination of architectural sensibility, scientific rigour and a very practical understanding of work processes. It is this combination that gives Airplan its distinctive position: a tool designed with real knowledge of the profession, for the professionals in it.
Background
Education and research
- PhD in Architecture and Urban Planning University of Liège Topic: emerging digital practices in small architecture firms
- University of California, Berkeley Completion certificate as Social and Behavioral Research Investigator
Adeline is also the author of several scientific publications on digital tools in architecture and their effects on professional practice.
Find Adeline online
- adelinestals.be: her architecture practice (Grivegnée, Liège)
- LinkedIn: her professional profile
- ORBi, University of Liège: her scientific publications
What she brings to Airplan
“Digital tools must adapt to the reality of the architect’s profession and give practices real help to work better day to day.”
Adeline Stals
