Events

In September the MUD-Lab hosts our public showcase to celebrate the graduating cohort’s work throughout the academic year, and to welcome our incoming students.

Our team hosted delegates from international universities as part of a visit to the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, leading a tour of urban developments across Manchester City Centre with an accompanied talk reflecting on the changing nature of the city’s built environment.

During the 2024/25 academic year our Professional Practice Forum hosted guest speakers from industry including Hannah Mitchell, Senior Planning Policy Officer and Richard Wood, Planning Policy Manager at Stockport Council, James Bush, Director and Sophia Norbury, Urban Designer at Stantec, and a workshop led by Matt Townsend and Caleb Jones from Planit.

As part of the celebration of ten years of the MSc UDIP course, we hosted a panel of our alumni who delivered a series of inspiring talks about their varies careers.

The panel included Juliet Ye, PhD student and Tutor at Manchester School of Architecture, Jo Gregory, Director at Urban Imprint, George Bissett, Assistant Planner at Enabl, and  Tom Page, Principal Planner at Pegasus.

During the 2023/24 academic year, our Professional Practice Forum hosted guest speakers from industry including Charlotte Hodges, Associate Director and David Euinton, Architect at Allies and Morrison who presented on the topic of development and design of the ID Manchester masterplan – a new part of the city and UoM campus.

We also hosted a talk from Jon Sandford, Senior Manager in Design and Masterplanning, Homes England and were invited by Andy Roberts, Director at Planit to visit their studio and undertake a walking tour of their project work in Altrincham town centre. 

During the 2022/23 academic year, our Professional Practice Forum hosted guest speakers from industry including Rhiannon Monaghan, Infrastructure and Delivery Lead at Manchester City Council who spoke about Strategic Regeneration Frameworks, delivery mechanisms and partnerships, focusing on the Victoria North development in north-east Manchester.

Hannah Harkis, Urban Design Associate at LDA Design discussed design coding, sharing LDA projects in Shrewsbury and Friar Park and the importance of masterplan evaluation.

Jim Fox, Director at Jim Fox Placemaking and Associate at Hyas Associates led a design workshop focusing on design assessment, discussing the role of design codes and masterplans and the challenges and opportunities associated with their development, looking specifically at the masterplan project for Leicester Waterside, alongside the design code and green infrastructure strategy.

Duncan McCallum, Chair of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and former Strategy and Listing Director at Historic England presented a talk on the Society for the protection of Ancient Buildings Approach to new development.

Our final speaker for the year was Dr Gemma Jerome, Director at Building with Nature. Gemma’s talk coincided with students’ focus on the detailed design of public realm and green spaces, she discussed human scale design focused on green infrastructure and nature and introduced the Building with Nature framework.