Speaker Info

Maria Smith 
Director of Sustainability and Physics, Buro Happold

Director of Sustainability and Physics at Buro Happold, Maria is an award-winning architect, engineer, writer, and curator, working across disciplines to bring the built environment in line with planetary limits. Maria leads Buro Happold’s London Sustainability and Physics team, an award-winning strategic consultancy focused on net zero whole life carbon, building performance, climate resilience, circular economy, health and wellbeing, social value, and sustainability strategies at building, campus, portfolio, and city scales.

Maria is a nationally elected member of the council of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a trustee of the Architecture Foundation, and on the steering committee of Architects Declare. In 2017 she was appointed a Design Advocate by the Greater London Authority where she serves on the Ecological Urbanism Sounding Board and advised on the development of the Circular Economy Guidance document. Maria was also chief curator of “Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth”, the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale that explored how architecture can establish the conditions for an economy based on social and ecological flourishing.