Julien de Smedt

Julien De Smedt (born 1975 in Brussels, Belgium) ) is the founder and director of JDS Architects based in Brussels, Copenhagen, Belo Horizonte and Shanghai. Projects include the VM Housing Complex, the Mountain Dwellings, the Maritime Youth House and the Holmenkollen Ski Jump.

Prior to founding JDS Architects, De Smedt worked with OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Rotterdam and co-founded and directed with Bjarke Ingels the architecture firm PLOT in Copenhagen.

Among other awards and recognitions, De Smedt received the Henning Larsen Prize in 2003 and an Eckersberg medal in 2005. In 2004 the Stavanger Concert Hall was appointed Worldʼs Best Concert Hall at the Venice Biennale, and the Maritime Youth House won the AR+D award in London and was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe award. In 2009, De Smedt received the Maaskant prize of Architecture, and in 2011 he received the WAN-World Architecture News ʼ21 for 21ʼ Award leading architects of the 21st century. De Smedt has given lectures and been exhibited in numerous locations around the world. His academic contributions include visiting professorships in Rice and Lexington University. JDS Architects released 2 monographs entitled PIXL to XL and Agenda which are distributed worldwide.

De Smedt was born in Brussels. After attending schools in Brussels, Paris, Los Angeles and London, he received a diploma with commendation from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London in 2000. He then went to Rotterdam to work for Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Rem Koolhaas.

In 2001 he went to Copenhagen to set up the architectural practice PLOT together with OMA colleague Bjarke Ingels. The company fast achieved success and received significant national and international recognition for their inventive designs. This included several commissions and competition wins as well as a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2004 for a proposal for a new music house for Stavanger, Norway. Their first major project to be realized was the award-winning VM Houses in Ørestad, Copenhagen in 2005. In spite of the success and attention, PLOT was disbanded in January 2006 and Julien De Smedt founded Julien De Smedt Architects (often referred to as JDS), while his former partner founded Bjarke Ingels Group.

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