Jeremy Smith is design director of the Auckland-based firm Irving Smith Architects, a research-based design practice working in New Zealand and abroad. For Passing Through, he will discuss several institutional and residential projects, with a focus on Bach-with-Two-Roofs, a previously completed residential complex that needed to be re-conceived following a devastating cyclone that destroyed its wooded surrounding. The project exemplifies “Soft Architecture,” the firm’s ethos of engaging with existing landscapes before generating new contexts.

Other projects to be discussed include:

• NMIT Arts & Media Building, whose timber elements are all locally sourced, including an LVL structure incorporating seismic engineering using post-tensioned timber shear walls.
• Whakatane Library and Exhibition Centre, a civic center created within a reinvented abandoned large-scale retail space.
• Trafalgar Centre, including both a new multipurpose pavilion, seismic remediation of an existing structure, and masterplan for this major sports complex and adjoining public park.

Jeremy Smith received his BArch from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and recently completed work for his PhD at the University of Auckland, where he currently teaches.

The firm was awarded World Villa of the Year for the Bach House at the 2017 World Architecture Festival and has received numerous national awards from the New Zealand Institute of Architecture.

Irving Smith represented New Zealand at the 2015 and 2018 Prague International Architecture Festivals.

The lecture will be followed by a conversation with architect Kai-Uwe Bergmann, a partner at BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group.