Matthew
Claudel

Founder of Field States, Portland, Oregon, US

Matthew Claudel is a designer and writer. He is the founder of Field States, a benefit corporation whose mission is to generate civic value using strategic design. He is affiliate faculty in Portland State University’s Department of Geography. Matthew was previously the Strategic Design Lead for Curative, a health care company seeking to end the Covid-19 pandemic. At Curative, he piloted and implemented a number of projects, including the vaccination program, which grew from a concept and strategy to 1 million doses delivered in five months. 

Prior to Curative, Matthew co-founded MIT’s designX program, where he was the Head of Civic Innovation and an instructor for four years. Matthew has co-authored two books, Open Source Architecture (Thames & Hudson) and The City of Tomorrow (Yale University Press), and published articles in peer reviewed journals, book chapters and speculative fiction pieces, primarily surrounding the issues of technology, design, and cities. 

In 2018, Matthew received the Rappaport Foundation’s Public Policy Fellowship to work with the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, where he created strategies for place-based experimentation with civic technology. He was also a fellow with the McConnell Foundation’s “Cities for People” initiative, and is an International affiliate of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal at McGill University. Matthew served on the jury for the Canadian Federal government’s $50M Smart City Challenge, and supports the continuation of the program as a strategic advisor for the Community Solutions Network, through Open North. He is a protagonist of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 89plus global community of artists.

Matthew holds a doctorate in Advanced Urbanism from MIT, where his work focused on the emerging practices of urban experimentation as they relate to civic value. As an undergraduate, he studied architecture at Yale, and received a Master of Science in Urban Studies from MIT.