Smith Mordak

Smith is an architect-engineer-writer working across disciplines to realise a regenerative economy and built environment. They are former Chief Executive of UK Green Building Council and have two decades of experience in leadership roles at built environment practices including Buro Happold, Webb Yates Engineers / Interrobang, and Studio Weave.

Smith has edited and authored several impactful reports, including UKGBC’s Climate Resilience Roadmap; Built for the Environment (presented to COP26 and endorsed by 300+ organisations); Fostering Prosperity: Economic Benefits of Environmental Regulation for the Aldersgate Group; and multiple studies for C40 on how cities can deliver affordable housing, inclusive governance, resilient public space, and thriving local economies.

They write regularly for the architectural press including the Architects’ Journal, Dezeen, Architectural Review, and RIBAJ where they had a column for five years. They have also written for the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Green Alliance and CUSP blogs. They have appeared on a variety of podcasts, radio, and television including BBC News and BBC Radio 4.

Smith led a unique collaboration between engineers at Buro Happold, landscape architect and writer, Julia Watson and three Indigenous communities to create The Symbiocene for the Barbican. They co-founded the international series of politics and architecture debates, Turncoats and were chief curator of the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale ‘Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth’.

Work w/ CUSP

With CUSP, Smith is writing for the blog, writing a book on the architecture and temporality of the interconnected climate, housing, and cost-of-living crises, and researching the connections between the gender binary and systems of oppression that perpetuate harmful economic and environmental extraction.

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