Jack Smith’s distinguished career spans six decades. He is both an architectural practitioner and an educator. He holds a doctorate degree in architecture with an underpinning in philosophy. He has received numerous honors and awards in both architecture and academia. Recently retired from a Teaching Professorship at Montana State University School of Architecture, he has returned to a full-time practice based in Ketchum / Sun Valley, Idaho.


Among his many honors and awards, he received the AIA Idaho Gold Medal of Honor in September 2023 for, “his body of work, lasting contributions, theory, and practice in the field of architecture.” He is a Fellow of the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, a national honor. He was elevated to Fellow in 1996 in the category of design, “for notable contributions to the aesthetic, scientific and practical efficiency of architecture.”
Dr. Smith is a registered architect in numerous states and was board certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, NCARB, in 1972.  His portfolio spans a large geographical area including the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Through the years, The American Institute of Architects, The American Society of Landscape Architects, and academic institutions have recognized Dr. Smith with more than fifty honors and design awards. His work has been published widely in journals, magazines, films, and books.


Early in his career, Smith served a long apprenticeship with John Sugden, a Mies van der Rohe protégé. Through this mentorship he gained a strong discipline in design and meticulous attention to detail. He is well versed and qualified in projects of diverse scale and typologies. He has also performed several environmentally sensitive land use studies.
Before establishing private practice in Idaho in 1974, Smith was founding Partner and President of ENTELEKI, Architecture, Planning, Research; a firm of 75 people with offices in San Francisco, California and Salt Lake City, Utah. While at ENTELEKI, and as a member of the Snowbird Design Group, he was one of the original architects and planners of the Snowbird Recreation Area in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Today, Snowbird Resort remains one of America’s great year-round resort destinations.


In the mid to late sixties and early seventies, Jack Smith was in partnership with Dan Kiley, the internationally celebrated landscape architect, based in Charlotte, Vermont, working in the fields of architecture, site planning, landscape architecture and environmental studies. During his tenure there he was partner-in- charge of several projects including land use studies. He was also partner-in-charge of four high-rise office complexes in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
It was said of Smith in 1995 by Allan Temko, Pulitzer Prize winning author and architectural critic, “When one sees his work in California and elsewhere,  perfectly at home in different terrains, it is clear that he is not primarily a regional architect, but a far reaching designer of national and even international outlook, including a long glance at Japan, who responds to the needs of specific sites and communities with rare sensitivity and grace.”