The SOM Foundation and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture are pleased to present “Sixth Street Viaduct as Next Generation Infrastructure” with 2026 Researcher-in-Residence Linda C. Samuels, marking the culmination of her residency.
August 13, 2026
Mackey Apartments Garage Top
1137 Cochran Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90019
Sixth Street Viaduct, Los Angeles. Photograph by Iwan Baan, Courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture.
Samuels’s research project utilizes a combination of data-based analysis and empirical, qualitative explorations, intentionally combining quantitative information with lived experience. Revisiting the project four years after the bridge first opened, and just months before the unveiling of the park below, her analysis asks how the project lives up to its promise as next generation infrastructure. On August 13, she will share observations from her month in residency at the MAK Center, and the beginning of a set of multi-dimensional and humanistic mappings that assess the Sixth Street Viaduct as a mobility conduit, public space, and prototype for next generation infrastructure.
Sixth Street Viaduct, Los Angeles. Photograph by Iwan Baan, Courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture.
Sixth Street Viaduct, Los Angeles. Photograph by Iwan Baan, Courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture.
Linda C. Samuels is Professor and Chair of urban design at the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis and the inaugural Director of Sustainable Design and Environmental Justice. Samuels’s research focuses on infrastructural opportunism—leveraging investment in large-scale systems to create more socially and environmentally productive public works. She teaches inter-disciplinary urban design studios and seminars on Infrastructural Urbanism, urban history and theory, and alternative sustainability metrics. In 2023, she completed an Infrastructure Equity Scorecard Pilot Project for the City of Los Angeles and a produce rescue and distribution mapping project for LA-based nonprofit, Food Forward. Samuels was co-PI on Mobility For All By All, an interdisciplinary project aiming to increase the benefits of St. Louis’s MetroLink expansion for local residents living along the alignment. Previously, Samuels was the director of the Sustainable City Project at the University of Arizona and a Senior Research Associate at UCLA’s cityLAB where she co-developed and co-ran the WPA 2.0 (Working Public Architecture) design competition. Her book, Infrastructural Optimism, is available now from Routledge.
