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The MUD program is regularly represented in the Sam Fox School’s annual Public Lecture Series, which brings nationally and internationally recognized creatives, historians, and critics to campus, promoting new ideas in practice, theory, and technology.

In addition, the MUD program often arranges program-specific opportunities to enrich the curricular experience, including a pair of annual workshops: Informal Cities and The Lively City.


View Recordings of Past Lectures


Informal Cities Workshop


John Kamp (center) and James Rojas (third from right) led the 2023 Informal Cities Workshop. Photo: Devon Hill/WashU.

The annual Informal Cities Workshop provides students with an intensive, hands-on opportunity to grapple with frictions and interconnections that exist between the informal and the formal aspects of the city. It consists of a keynote lecture, which is free and open to the public, followed by a one-credit, weekend-long design charrette. Previous workshops have explored conditions in Varanasi, India; Lima, Peru; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa; and Caracas, Venezuela.

Past Workshop Leaders

Thorsten Deckler

Co-Founder, 26'10 south Architects

Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava

Co-Founders, urbz & Institute of Urbanology

Kathryn Ewing

Director, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) Programme, South Africa

Jorge Mario Jáuregui

Founder and Project Director, Atelier Metropolitano

Sharif S. Kahatt

Principal Partner, K+M

John Kamp

Founder, Prairieform

Geeta Mehta

Co-Founder, urbz: User Generated Cities

Chelina Odbert

Co-founder, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI).

Mabe Garcia Rincon

Executive director, Dis_Local Lab

James Rojas

Founder, Place It!

Elisa Silva

Principal and Founder, Enlace Arquitectura

Heinrich Wolff

Principal, Wolff Architects


The Lively City Workshop


The Lively City 2025 traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Lively City: Behavioral Studies & Public Space Design provides students new perspectives and skills that put people and their needs at the heart of the creative process of re-imagining and transforming cities. Concepts that connote inviting, vibrant, and stimulating urban environments—such as livability, lively cities, and public life—are frequently communicated in new visions for the future of cities, but are the most often unrealized component of design projects. This course provides the opportunity to explore these concepts and reconcile people’s often conflicting needs for privacy and social stimulation within urban areas.

Recent Workshops

Copenhagen

In 2025, The Lively City Workshop explored the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, public space, and environmental systems in Copenhagen, Denmark — the city committed to being the world’s first carbon neutral capital. Through on-site exploration and conversations with local designers, policy makers, and residents, students explored what makes a lively city.

Los Angeles

The 2024 Lively City Workshop in Los Angeles, Calif. included a full-day public life survey, small group work to process and visualize mappings and recordings, and presentations to invited guest reviewers from Sasaki on proposals for how to use public spaces.

Miami

Lively City 2023 traveled to Miami, Fla. to study The Underline, a reclaimed rail line for parks and public spaces. Students used a public life survey to understand pedestrian traffic, movement, and usage along the proposed project.


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