Of Its Time and of Its Place: The Work of Richard Murphy Architects

Formed in 1991, Richard Murphy Architects' early reputation was built on highly crafted and innovative domestic work in Edinburgh, Scotland. The practice has grown both in size and range of commissions, working across the UK and Ireland, in Europe and Sri Lanka and, more than two decades on, has amassed an extensive portfolio, designing buildings and spaces for the arts, education, housing, health, public and community use, as well as masterplanning. Richard Murphy Architects makes careful responses to complex contexts--whether insertion, extension or new-build, the practice's projects develop a dialogue between existing and new, intimacy and scale. large or small scale, public or private, each scheme harnesses plan, form, materials and detailing to produce a subtle, sensitively-considered result. Covering projects from Edinburgh's fruitmarket gallery to the British high commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from schemes for large housing association clients to the intimate scale of the Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre in Edinburgh, this survey of Richard Murphy Architects' work presents a series of fascinating projects, and charts the development of a key contemporary architectural practice from the late twentieth century into the twenty-first.