Matthew Bernstine, MUD ’14

Intro
I think urban designers are really attuned to drawing, and also imagining better relationships between people and the actual places that they live each and every day.

NYC → STL
I’ve been fortunate to be able to live in a number of places. I moved to New York City, which is where I started to understand how infrastructures meets people’s everyday lives. I could see this circular idea of how I came to the position I am in now: it’s through a design lens and looking at design as a product, but also a value system. The infrastructure projects I worked on in New York really highlighted, for me, the need to come back to school and really understand those very close, street-level interactions. That’s how I ended up in St. Louis.

Let’s Talk
I like to serve on civic boards, whether it’s in transportation, sustainability, or planning writ large. I love to talk with people and I’m deeply interested in how people move through the city, what they think about their current city, what the future of it might be, and how it might be better. I often strike up conversations with people who are not designers. And I think that’s part of it — I don’t want to limit my conversations to the profession, I want to look broadly. I think that’s important to be not only interdisciplinary, but also to understand the breadth of what it means to be in a place.

Socially Engaged Practice
My advice for people who are interested is build a large and robust network, some of which can be really deep connections whom you partner with often. We do that in the Office for Socially Engaged Practice, and some of it is that we just like to be helpful partners, whether that’s connecting, matchmaking, or just striking up relationships that we may not be directly involved with, but we see connections and synergies between them.

Teaching
There’s some very direct connections that I have between teaching and community building. I try, whenever possible, to partner a course with a either a direct city action or an initiative that is happening in St. Louis at a particular time with the courses is occurring, or to build in voices from those within the neighborhoods to provide some grounding perspective for students.

I hope the students who come through my classes really understand and value difference. And I think that that can come through in a variety of ways, but I hope they walk away with a capacity to understand the value of difference how we can think about alternative models, whether it be design, programs, or systems. My goal is that they really take away this idea that things can be different and that’s okay. We can value difference and find ways to build a better system and to build better cities.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Matthew Bernstine, MUD ‘14, is an award-winning designer, educator, and associate director of the Sam Fox School’s Office for Socially Engaged Practice. Through collaborative endeavors like the creation of Peace Park, Sumner StudioLab, and the Mobility For All, By All initiative, Bernstine works to integrate practice, community-led design, and academic scholarship. He is LEED AP certified and a member of St. Louis City’s Community Mobility Committee.