About

Matthew Claudel is the founder of Field States, an urban design and strategy firm based in Portland, OR. He has a PhD in Advanced Urbanism from MIT, where his work focused on urban experimentation as it relates to civic value. He has cowritten two books (Open Source Architecture, Thames & Hudson and The City of Tomorrow, Yale University Press), as well as peer reviewed journal articles and fiction primarily related to technology, art, cities, and innovation. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Matthew was the Strategic Design Lead for Curative, a company that scaled rapidly to deliver tests and vaccines across the country. He was a Futures Fellow at the Purpose Foundation in 2021, and a Juror for the Canadian Federal Smart Cities Challenge in 2018. Matthew co-founded MIT’s designX program in 2016, where he was the Head of Civic Innovation and an instructor for four years. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Michigan’s Taubman School of Architecture, and is an Affiliate Faculty Member of Portland State University's Geography Department.