Matthew Soules is a licensed architect and urbanist in Canada and the United States holding a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University. He explores the relationship between the built environment and socio-political ideology. Soules pursues this work through diverse disciplinary media, ranging from scholarly research and writing to the design of objects and spaces at multiple scales. Soules is the founding director Matthew Soules Architecture (MSA), a practice that works on projects that often blur the distinctions between architecture, landscape, and art. MSA has been widely recognized for its work, including the Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s ‘Emerging Firm Award’ in 2010 and an Architizer A+ Award in 2015.
Prior to founding MSA, Matthew worked with leading architects around the world, including Rem Koolhaas in the Rotterdam headquarters of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York City, and Arthur Erickson in Vancouver. He has made significant contributions to high-profile projects in Beijing, Shanghai, Milan, Paris and NYC. Matthew is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and has been a guest critic at numerous institutions, including Harvard University, MIT, Northeastern University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. His writing has been published in prominent journals and magazines including Praxis, 306090, Canadian Architect, Azure, and Topos.
In 2011, the Toronto-based Twenty + Change awards program selected MSA as a design practice that is exemplary for pushing the boundaries of the discipline. Soules is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and has served as a design critic at institutions including Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, and UC Berkeley. Current scholarly research includes a Government of Canada funded investigation into the relationship between real-estate speculation and the form and function of urban environments. Soules’ writing has been widely published in periodicals including Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, and Canadian Architect, and in books such as A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver and Industries of Architecture (forthcoming, Fall 2015).
