Jennifer Smith

Jennifer Smith is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture at Auburn University. A licensed architect with fifteen years of professional experience, her research focuses on advancing design education and practice. Rather than limiting design to artifact-based productions, Smith explores experimental design methodologies and academic programs operating at the intersection of disciplines. Her work integrates logistics, fabrication, and allied arts, reflecting a career shaped by non-traditional professional experiences. While she has consistently engaged in architectural practice, her involvement with interdisciplinary design studios has fostered a rigorous design process that incorporates fringe industries such as fabrication and construction.

Smith’s pedagogical contributions span the Environmental Design curriculum, where she has taught over 1,300 students across eleven distinct course types over the past six years. Her teaching portfolio includes senior capstone studios and courses emphasizing entrepreneurship as a creative design approach. As the coordinator of the Matters Unit within the program, she centers her instruction on materials and digital fabrication. Courses emphasize additive and subtractive digital fabrication processes, encouraging students to research, design, and fabricate limited-scope projects. Inspired by Seymour Papert’s assertion that constructing, making, and publicly sharing objects fosters deeper knowledge construction, Smith’s pedagogy moves beyond a purely mentalist approach. By engaging students in hands-on project development, she empowers them to realize their personal design concepts.

Smith’s research lies at the critical intersection of Environmental Design pedagogy and post-disaster housing. Her work posits that a resilient future, one that effectively addresses climate change adaptation and mitigation, requires interdisciplinary thinkers who employ design processes as problem-solving tools for both physical and conceptual systems. Post-disaster housing exemplifies this imperative, as it demands interdisciplinary frameworks to ensure effective architectural outcomes. Housing plays a pivotal role in displacement, reconstruction success, and future disaster mitigation. Architects and designers, trained to navigate interdependence across systems and scales, are essential contributors to post-disaster housing initiatives. Their involvement enables more comprehensive, holistic strategies for resilient housing solutions.