Keynote Speaker: Jeremy Smith, Irving Smith Architects

When a cyclone cleared the trees around a house he designed in a forest, accomplished Aotearoa New Zealand architect Jeremy Smith embarked on an alteration, research and teaching adventure. What happened next included a multitude of international awards, speaking, exhibition and judging engagements, an iterative-design teaching program and PHD at the University of Auckland, an Adjunct Professorship at Aotearoa’s newest architecture school, an advisory role in India, an Adjunct Professorship in Africa, a Visiting Distinguished Practitioner appointment in America, and now a book with American critic and author Aaron Betsky.

Jeremy is Design Director at Irving Smith Architects and with their soft architecture comes the question; Is being finished, finished? It’s a question that comes from an island far far away for in this climate emergency everyone and everywhere counts. Key to Jeremy’s practice, teaching, and research, is understanding how buildings inhabit an environment that constantly undergoes change, be it in city or rural landscapes.

His work has been recognized by UNESCO, UN-Habitat and the World Government Summit. He’s won at World Architecture Festivals, including World Timber Building of the Year 2020-2021, the Taipei International Design Awards, the Masterprize Awards, the Indo-Pacific INDE Awards. He’s a laureate of the Eurasian International Architecture Prize, lectured from the New York League of Architects to RIBA, judged the Indian Institute of Architects National Awards, given Masterclasses in Africa, and contributed from Taliesin West to University of the Free State, FAY Jones School of Architecture and Design to L’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Val de Seine.

Publications include Architecture Magazine, Architecture Record, Elle, Vogue and GQ Magazine, and most recently a book entitled Unfinished and Far Far Away. The Architecture of Irving Smith Architects which traces their internationally awarded approach of participating with existing landscapes before generating new contexts to further a discussion on the global importance of peripheries.