Ideas worth spreading

Architecture that's built to heal

1,837,499 views |

Michael Murphy |

TED2016

• February 2016

Architecture is more than a clever arrangement of bricks. In this eloquent talk, Michael Murphy shows how he and his team look far beyond the blueprint when they're designing. Considering factors from airflow to light, theirs is a holistic approach that produces community as well as (beautiful) buildings. He takes us on a tour of projects in countries such as Rwanda and Haiti, and reveals a moving, ambitious plan for The Memorial to Peace and Justice, which he hopes will heal hearts in the American South.

Architecture is more than a clever arrangement of bricks. In this eloquent talk, Michael Murphy shows how he and his team look far beyond the blueprint when they're designing. Considering factors from airflow to light, theirs is a holistic approach that produces community as well as (beautiful) buildings. He takes us on a tour of projects in countries such as Rwanda and Haiti, and reveals a moving, ambitious plan for The Memorial to Peace and Justice, which he hopes will heal hearts in the American South.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Donate to MASS Design Group. Your support allows us to scale the reach and impact of our mission, and to aide the most worthy causes and organizations providing social value.

About the speaker

Michael Murphy

See speaker profile

As co-founder and CEO of MASS Design Group, Michael Murphy envisions and creates community-centric structures with healing built into their core.

Michelle Alexander | The New Press, 2010 | Book

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Few books have uncovered the structural failures and deep legacy of racism of our society with such clarity, insight and brilliance. Alexander's book is a must read for all Americans to understand the country we live in.

Bryan Stevenson | Spiegel & Grau, 2014 | Book

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson's powerful story about America's addiction to incarceration and humane solution to fix it through mercy, justice, and forgiveness.

Mike Davis | Verso, 1990 | Book

City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Mike Davis shows how to write about architecture and the social cost of doing it wrong. Through a razor-tongued, fact-filled opus, City of Quartz is both a love letter to and harrowing dystopian critique of the city of angels that gives us the tools to read our urban conditions through their social and political milieu.

David Harvey | Wiley-Blackwell, 1989 | Book

The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change

Harvey, more than anyone I've read, shows how the predominate style and form of our built world is as much driven by the economic and political factors of our society as it is by the architects themselves.

Eyal Weizman | Sternberg Press, 2014 | Book

Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth

Weizman shows how the built world can be a violent, occupying and terrifying force. His work is a visual and virtual tour of a way to reveal and relearn the structural barriers to a more just society.

John Donne | Book

John Donne: Holy Sonnets

'Break, blow, burn, and make me new.' Donne makes us feel and experience the abjectness of isolation, and the anguish of mortality. These poems changed my life.

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Donate to MASS Design Group. Your support allows us to scale the reach and impact of our mission, and to aide the most worthy causes and organizations providing social value.