Biography

Professor Mark Burry 
Mark Burry is the Founding Director for Swinburne University of Technology’s ‘Smart Cities Research Institute’, an appointment he took up in May 2017. His role is to help lead the development of a whole-of-university research approach to helping ensure that our future cities anticipate and meet the needs of all – smart citizens for smart cities.
Mark Burry is a practising architect who has published internationally on two main themes: putting theory into practice with regard to procuring ‘challenging’ architecture, and the life, work and theories of the architect Antoni Gaudí. He has been Senior Architect to the Sagrada Família Basilica Foundation since 1979, pioneering distant collaboration with his colleagues based on-site in Barcelona.  
In 2001 Mark Burry founded the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University before establishing the Design Research Institute (DRI) in 2008. He held an ARC funded Federation Fellowship in ‘Complex Architecture and Convergent Design’ 2007-2012. He joined the University of Melbourne in 2014 as Professor of Urban Futures at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning where he assisted in the development of the Faculty’s capacity to consolidate research in urban futures, drawing together and augmenting expertise in urban visualisation, urban analytics, and urban policy.