The current global scenario has triggered extensive debates on not only our future as a sustainable global economy but also on the need to return to our ‘origins’. For aficionados of the built environment, this need translates into material, constructional, technological, and systemic evocations. We are bound to ask questions that look into the future – How should we build, What should we build, what should we build with, Who should we build with?

At Sushant University School of Art and Architecture, we attempt to integrate these questions into a yearlong discourse around a material that has its genesis in the past, yet is versatile enough to respond to the technological challenges of the future – MUD. We delve into its making, its use, its potentials for hybridisation, urbanisation and universalisation – what we are calling MUD Futures. We bring together the People of Mud, deliberate on what is the Mud of People, all the while enquiring into What is Mud?

Mud Futures 2021-2022 is a global year-long multi-host multi-location conclave on the futures of mud in architecture conceptualised and conducted by the School of Art and Architecture, Sushant University.

The conclave is an opportunity for a global platform for ideas, thoughts, research and architectural projects centred around mud. Here, mud is considered as a material, as an approach, as a vehicle for sustainability, and as the source of an ideological imperative for the future of the built environment.

We welcome our global partners, our co-hosts and our brilliant faculty, alumni and students to come together to deliberate once a month for the next 9 months on the futures of our profession through the lens of MUD.