MUD 712 - FALL 2025
MUD1
GRADUATE STUDIO I
MASTER OF URBAN DESIGNMUD 712 - FALL 2025PROFESSOR
Gabriel Cuéllar“JUSTICE”
Strictly Infrastructural
This studio took the invisible realm of infrastructural urban conditions as its ‘site.’ We focused on the relationships between space, place, and law through the lens of landownership, tackling several questions: How does property, and other forms of spatial law, entrench disparities? How might it also empower residents? How can designers creatively mobilize property to their advantage? What forms of urban design—activist, practical, speculative, interdisciplinary, participatory—become possible? Where does Ann Arbor—a city whose homeowners seem intent on preserving the status quo—go from here? How ought property—the basic urban infrastructure—change in response to present predicaments?
STUDENTS
Yin-Tuan Joyce Hsueh, Tianchang Li
PROFESSOR
Gabriel Cuéllar
The P.I.L.O.T. Project reimagines Ann Arbor as a “student city” shaped by students’ everyday needs, desires, and lived experiences. While Ann Arbor is often described as one of the most livable cities in the United States, its urban fabric is strongly influenced by the University of Michigan, where students comprise a substantial portion of the population. The project identifies a spatial conflict between students’ dynamic daily activities and the mono-functional residential enclaves produced by large-lot campus tissues. These master-planned housing complexes prioritize standardized living environments and private amenities yet overlook the small-scale, mixed-use spaces essential to student life. In response, the design proposes human-scale, mixed-use interventions that reconnect living, learning, commerce, and social interaction within a more inclusive urban framework.
STUDENTS
Carolyn Larsen, Minza Shahid
PROFESSOR
Gabriel Cuéllar
This project reimagines residential development in Ann Arbor through the lens of the Huron River Watershed. Focusing on the North Sky neighborhood, it proposes scalable strategies to transform conventional R1 zoning landscapes into water-stewarding communities. By converting turf lawns into infiltration meadows, decentralizing stormwater systems, redesigning streets for walkability, and creating local community nodes, the plan reconnects residents to water while addressing runoff, biodiversity loss, and car dependency. Designed for both retrofits and future development, the project positions watershed stewardship as a framework for zoning reform and neighborhood growth in Ann Arbor’s evolving Comprehensive Plan.