Events and Workshops
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.