Richard Murphy (architect)

For other people named Richard Murphy, see Richard Murphy (disambiguation).

Richard Murphy OBE is a Scottish architect and businessman. He is the founder and principal architect of Richard Murphy Architects, an architectural firm operating in Edinburgh.

Life

Murphy was educated at Newcastle and Edinburgh Universities, and has taught at the latter. In 1991 he formed Edinburgh architectural firm, Richard Murphy Architects, and it has since grown to over twenty architects. In the early years his firm focused on designing extensions to houses and mews conversions however have subsequently diversified onto education, healthcare, the arts and commercial work. They have worked on several UK National Lottery-funded buildings. Whilst teaching, he researched the work of the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa at the Castevecchio, Verona.

In 1995 Murphy designed the first of the UK's Maggie's Centres, in Edinburgh, which now acts as the adminstrative headquarters for Maggie's.Designed to aid cancer treatment, the building was designed without any corridors, to avoid an institutional feel.

In 1998 he presented a Channel 4 documentary on Scarpa, directed by Murray Grigor. Richard Murphy published a book titled Carlo Scarpa & Castelvecchio in 1990 . He also co-wrote "An Architect's Appreciation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh". In 2004 Murphy exhibited at the Venice Biennale. In 2012, Richard Murphy Architects published a book titled "Of Its Time and of Its Place: The Work of Richard Murphy Architects."

Murphy is a Member of the RIBA, a Fellow of the RIAS, an Academician of the Royal Scottish Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an Honorary Fellow of Napier University. Richard Murphy Architects has also won a total of 20 RIBA Awards.

He was appointed an OBE in the New Year's Honours January 2007 for services to architecture, the only practising architect on the list.

Murphy has held lectures in places such as Scotland, at Edinburgh University, the Student-led 5710 lecture society of The Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and The Built Environment, Aberdeen and Strathclyde University in Glasgow. In 2006 he completed a lecture tour in South Africa, and on 13 March 2012 he gave a conference titled "Architecture of its time and its place" to students at Barcelona Institute of Architecture. Most recently Murphy lectured at the Association of Icelandic Architects in 2015.

He previously completed a modern mews-style house at Calton Hill near Edinburgh Castle, for his own use, and says he lives "pretty simply". More recently Richard Murphy completed his own house on Hart Street in 2015 which won a the Saltire Society Award for Best Single Dwelling New Build

Proposed work

• Haymarket Redevelopment, Edinburgh
• Tolbooth Arts Centre, Stirling, 2002
• British High Commission, Sri Lanka, 2008
• Housing Moore Street, Glasgow, 2008
• University of East London - Computer and Conference Centre, London, 2009
• Stratheden Dementia and Mental Health Unit, Fife, 2009
• Justice Mill Lane Park Inn Hotel and Office Development, Aberdeen, 2011
• Queen's University Belfast Postgraduate Accommodation, Belfast, 2012
• Old See House Mental Health Facility (in association with RPP Architects), Belfast, 2014
• Postgraduate Housing for The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 2014

External links

• Official site
• Richard Murphy: Ten Years of Practice at RIBA website
• The 5710 Lecture Series and Society
• "British High Commission, Sri Lanka" on Architecture News Plus