Suzy Jones known in the built environment for her approach to applied research & innovation, using live demonstrators and event-based engagement as a tool to better understand and test new ideas. The trajectory of Suzy’s career is somewhat unorthodox, she is not an architect or an engineer, but a strategist and innovator interested in how humans understand the world, and how they interact with each other and the things around them. Suzy has spent the past 15 years leading inter disciplinary teams and exploring design and the future of the built environment. Prior to this she curated and produced contemporary art programmes for a variety of venues.
As Director of RIBA North, the Royal Institute of British Architects facility on the Liverpool Waterfront, Suzy established a centre for research and innovation that included public facing engagement through exhibition spaces and events programmes. This was a unique approach for the RIBA but provided access to new knowledge and learning for the RIBA membership and other built environment professionals and the public. Suzy’s primary focus was the impact of Anthropocene change and the ways in which the profession could mitigate and adapt to changing planetary systems, through design.
At Urban Splash Suzy established Future Lab, a research and innovation laboratory with a remit to look beyond immediate horizons at the ways in which we may want, and need to live, in the future. She led teams of specialists exploring the impacts of societal, environmental and technological change on the design and development of homes and neighbourhoods.
Suzy is particularly interested in how people engage with new ideas and the ways in which knowledge and understanding helps facilitate behavioural change.