Tyler Smith is transforming contemporary architecture

Form that follows Country 

Throughout his undergraduate studies, Tyler continued exploring the link between architectural design and social change. As someone passionate about the environment, it seemed to him that the most meaningful change emerged through the relationships between people, architecture and natural landscapes. 

As he progressed into the Master of Architecture, he felt his architectural ethos starting to take shape. He began collaborating with students from the Landscape Architecture degree, blurring the boundaries that traditionally separated the two disciplines. 

But it was when he discovered the concept of designing with Country that the final puzzle piece fell into place. Designing with Country is a design methodology that draws on more than 60,000 years of Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being to shape human interactions with the land.  

This discovery powered an extensive body of work throughout Tyler’s postgraduate studies, often in partnership with Landscape Architecture student Miles Aguis and bolstered by the degree’s commitment to decarbonisation, decolonisation and urban equity.

His major projects included Listening to our Place as Architects Amongst Country, which considered unlearning, learning and reciprocity as bridges to overcome colonial frameworks, and Learning from Wareamah, which explored the slowing down, listening and learning required to centre the needs and relationships of Country in architectural practice. 

“This knowledge came about under the guidance of an incredible community of practice, including UTS Indigenous tutors Matte Ager McConnell, Marni Reti, Mackenzie Saddler and Alison Page, as well as Master of Architecture Director Brooke Jackson and landscape architect Andrew Toland,” Tyler says.  

The power of ecological interventions 

Tyler’s boundary-blurring approach to architecture secured him the 2025 Architects Medallion, one of the highest honours for emerging architects. According to the award citation, ‘Tyler’s dedication to architecture as a means of strengthening ecological and social relationships marks him as an emerging leader in the field’. 

Winning the Medallion is the clearest indicator yet that his work is resonating across the profession — but even today, he remains surprised by the win.  

“I thought I’d be more landscape orientated than they’d be looking for, but I guess what it means to me now is recognition that designing with Country and relational design are being recognised as important by the field,” he says.  

As a recent graduate, Tyler is now taking his unique architectural approach into the world both in and beyond university. He remains firmly connected to UTS, both as a peer-to-peer tutor at the university’s Jumbunna Institute for Education and Research and as a tutor in the Bachelor of Design in Architecture. 

He’s also the co-founder of apeapeape, a design collective he created with two UTS peers; apeapeape is about ‘long-term, reciprocal relationships with place, people and more-than-human systems.’ It’s just the next step for a designer who is fully attuned to the power of architecture to reconnect people to the landscape. Now, he wants everyone else to understand those interconnections, too.