JDS Architects

“Our projects are humanly designed, politically engaged, financially viable and structurally realistic,” says Julien De Smedt, founder and director of Copenhagen-based JDS Architects. With works such as the Maritime Youth House in Copenhagen and The Iceberg apartment building in Aarhus, Denmark, the internationally recognized designer and architect has generated a renewed awareness of architecture in Denmark.

De Smedt was born in Brussels and received his diploma from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. Prior to founding JDS Architects, he worked with Rotterdam-based OMA and co-founded PLOT, an architecture firm in Copenhagen.

His work can be viewed around the world, in cities including Copenhagen, Toronto, Paris, New York City and Sao Paulo, and has received multiple prizes, including the Golden Lion for World’s Best Concert Hall at the 2004 Venice Biennale, for Stavanger Concert Hall. In 2005, JDS Architects’ entry was chosen for the redesign of the Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, which hosted the 2011 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in March 2011. It is the world’s first ski jump to be built of steel and rises 1,230 feet above sea level.