CACC/AIA Charleston Lecture Series: Linda C. Samuels, RA, PhD

LINDA C. SAMUELS, RA, PhD

Director of Sustainable Design & Environmental Justice Chair of Urban Design Professor in Urban Design & Architecture College of Architecture / Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Washington University in St. Louis

Linda C. Samuels, RA, PhD, is Professor and Chair of urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and the inaugural Director of Sustainable Design and Environmental Justice for the School. She teaches inter-disciplinary studios and seminars on systems-based urban design, urban history and theory, and alternative sustainability metrics.

Samuels’s research focuses on ideas of infrastructural opportunism – leveraging investment in large-scale systems to create more socially and environmentally productive public works. She is currently working with ShadeLA and the Festival Trail team on grassroots planning for a more bike, pedestrian, and transit forward LA28 Olympics as well as convening research, teaching, and outreach focused on co-creating a more resilient St. Louis. She has partnered with Virgin Hyperloop One, Food Forward, Impossible Foods, and local, regional, and state agencies in Missouri, Arizona, and California.

Samuels was co-principal investigator on a grant from The Divided City initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation, entitled Mobility For All By All, which aims to increase the social and environmental benefits of the multibillion-dollar proposed MetroLink expansion in St. Louis for residents living along the alignment. She was a team member on the award-winning “+STL: Growing an Urban Mosaic” finalist proposal for the Chouteau Greenway Competition led by dhd, TLS Landscape Architecture & OBJECT TERRITORIES.

Previously, Dr. Samuels was the inaugural director of the Sustainable City Project (SCP), a multidisciplinary research, teaching, and outreach initiative of the University of Arizona where she worked with public and private partners on micro- to macro-scaled sustainability efforts in southern Arizona and the larger megaregion. While earning her Doctorate in Urban Planning at UCLA, she was a senior research associate at cityLAB, an urban think tank in UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design, where she co-ran the WPA 2.0 competition and symposium.

Samuels’s book, Infrastructural Optimism, is available now from Routledge.

• Lunch at 12:00 pm
• Lecture at 12:30 pm
• CEUs will only be given to AIA members attending in person. There will be a sign-in sheet at the door to receive credit

• Please park in the remote lot - located between Cooper and Grace Bridge Streets
• Please sign in at the front desk

Photo Credit: Park ‘n’ Play by JAJA Architects

Also check out other Arts events in Charleston, Contests in Charleston, Festivals in Charleston.