Nelson Scott Smith

Principal | Artichoke Design Company

Nelson Scott Smith is an architect, planner, teacher, and artist. He has worked with more than fifty colleges and universities across the United States and in Asia. Scott’s practice emphasizes the integration of planning and design, leadership for interdisciplinary teams of professionals, institutional sustainability, environmental stewardship, and climate action. Through his work and his Blue Poche Project, Scott advocates climate action policies and planning consequential to climate change and environmental and social justice. He advocates discussion and criticism integrating a social and environmental worldview with new measures for design excellence and new definitions of beauty.

His work is recognized through awards, public presentations, and national and international publications. He is a Rotch Traveling Scholar, a Loeb Fellow for Environmental Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a fellow to the Salzburg Seminars. Scott founded Artichoke Design Company in 2009. He lives and works in San Francisco and at The Sea Ranch, California.