Smith Mordak

Smith is the Chief Executive of UK Green Building Council. Formerly Director of Sustainability and Physics at Buro Happold, Smith works with a broad range of built environment organisations from asset managers to international NGOs including C40 Cities on their Clean Construction Programme.

In 2021, they were lead author of ‘Built for the Environment’ a report to COP26 commissioned by the RIBA and Architects Declare and endorsed by over 300 built environment organisations. They also edited ‘Fostering Prosperity: Economic Benefits of Environmental Regulation’ commissioned by the Aldersgate Group in 2020.

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, researching the connections between the gender binary and systems of oppression that perpetuate harmful economic and environmental extraction, and developing an index of community prosperity that seeks to create a framework for built environment interventions to contribute to the provision of resilient access to the means to live a flourishing life for all.

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