The MUDD 25 Exhibition, held in the Red Centre Gallery in March this year has been hailed as one of the most impressive to date. The exhibition showcased work that included adapting and responding to coastal resilience on the NSW Central Coast, studies in urban form of the Arncliffe / Cooks Cove precincts and a strategic review of the commercial core of North Sydney that responded to and challenged the new Metro site development and the future of North Sydney as part of Sydney’s global corridor.

A major part of the exhibition was highlighting the work undertaken in the MUDD 25 International Studios. Tasked with examination of sites in Beijing and Hangzhou – the northern and southern gateways to China’s 2000-year-old Grand Canal – the students proposed solutions for three different urban challenges. In Beijing new directions were explored for peri-urban areas on Beijing’s eastern periphery. In Hangzhou, students challenged the existing redevelopment proposals for a major new city centre on a brownfield industrial site as well as proposing fine grained urban interventions for a tight inner-city heritage precinct.

Visitors were also able to gain a sense of the many projects undertaken in the Program since its inception. A poster of the world that located every MUDD International Studio demonstrated the breadth and depth of global connections the Program has made while a linear timeline highlighted the projects that have been explored using Sydney as an urban laboratory. Beautifully presented and demonstrating the professional skills acquired by the students, the MUDD 25 Exhibition was a fitting celebration of this important milestone in the history of the MUDD Program.

ENROL NOW for T2 2020: https://www.be.unsw.edu.au/degrees/postgraduate-coursework/master-of-urban-development-and-design or email: info@muddevents.info

Thank you to all involved in the UNSW MUDD 25th Anniversary event.

What a special event it was!

The 2020 Reid Lecture, ‘Shanghai, New York, Sydney – Humanizing High Density’ will be given by: Zhizhe Yu (MUDD 2002), Co-founder & Managing Director, AI.SpaceFactory, New York, Shanghai, Barcelona. This will be followed by the opening of the MUDD25 Exhibition: Urban Intensity | Urban Design – Sydney | Beijing | Hangzhou in the BE Gallery, Red Centre West Wing. What a great occasion.

Testimonials about the UNSW Master of Urban Development and Design event sent to the Program Director, Professor James Weirick:

Thanks to you and your team of supporters (including the students) for a great 25^th anniversary event last evening. So appropriate to have one of our own graduates deliver the lecture and participate in the discussion on such an occasion, and appropriately under the current viral panic circumstances for it to be delivered, at least in part, in the virtual realm.

The publication is beautifully designed and illustrated, covering an amazing array of local and international projects, as well as being intellectually stimulating via the articles included therein. The exhibition was the best yet, in my view, with a high standard of design work, an elegant simplicity designed beautifully enhance what is in many ways an awkward exhibition space. I loved the simplicity, complementing linearity and mixture of projects and student experiences. So congratulations to Jodi and Andrew and the student project managers for their excellent work.

MUDD program has also consistently presented the best exhibitions and annual publications in the faculty – and better than any of our competitors at other Australian urban design programs, and most international ones.

As one of the original group that created this unique cross disciplinary venture (the first in the Faculty, and while we still had 5 schools, by the way!!) it is rewarding to look back on those 25 years and see the impressive list of graduates and participating staff. We have a lot of friends in so many countries contributing their skills to improve cities due to this program.

So congratulations!!

It has been a very worthwhile 25 years!!

Professor Emeritus Bruce Judd BArch(Hons) PhD ARAIA City Futures Research Centre, UNSW

It is an extraordinarily good display of the year’s work and the 25 years of international studios. I especially admired the simplicity of the layout and the circular display of all the international studios. I look forward to next year’s show.

Professor Emeritus Jon Lang UNSW