Anastassia Smirnova

Anastassia Smirnova is a Rotterdam-based designer and researcher. Trained as a scenographer, she has contributed to many multidisciplinary projects, with expertise spanning design, research, writing, and curatorial practice.

Early in her career, she worked at AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, as a designer and editor. In the 2010s, she joined the faculty at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design and directed the Institute’s education program. There, she combined research and teaching to develop innovative learning circuits, with preservation and scenography of adaptive reuse as her main focus.

Anastassia also served as Academic Director of the international MA program Advanced Urban Design at the Graduate School of Urbanism (HSE), exploring multidisciplinary project-making for transitional economies of the CIS countries.

In 2022, she curated the large-scale show Visionaries and edited the accompanying publication Visionaries. Notes on Systemic Change for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, addressing the questions of authorship in contemporary architecture. In 2023, together with Alexander Sverdlov, she became a guest professor on the Geographies, Landscape, Cities platform at the IKA, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

As co-founder of SVESMI office, Anastassia leads preservation initiatives and oversees educational and cultural programming, integrating research, design, and public engagement.