MASS Design Group CEO and leadership

Michael Murphy, Int FRIBA, is the Founding Principal and Executive Director of MASS Design Group, an architecture and design collective that leverages buildings, as well as the design and construction process, to become catalysts for economic growth, social change, and justice. Since MASS's beginnings, their portfolio of work has expanded to over a dozen countries and span the areas of healthcare, education, housing, urban development. MASS’s work has been published in over 900 publications and awarded globally. Most recently, MASS has been recognized as the winners of the national Arts and Letters Award for 2017 and the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. Michael’s 2016 TED talk has reached over a million views, and was awarded the Al Filipov Medal for Peace and Justice in 2017. MASS's project, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice was named the single greatest work of American architecture in the 21st century. Michael has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, University of Michigan, and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. Michael is from Poughkeepsie, NY, and holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago.

Alan co-leads strategy and design of the 120-person firm. With projects in over twenty countries and scope covering architecture, landscape, engineering, construction, and fabrication, he oversees the design process of the interdisciplinary studios.

Alan and MASS were awarded the National Design Award for Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. And the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Alan an International Fellowship in recognition of his contribution towards the field of architecture.

Alan is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders with the World Economic Forum, a community of over 800 men and women selected under the age of 40, who operate as a force for good to overcome barriers that elsewhere stand in the way of progress.

He has previously taught at the Yale School of Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Chris Anderson, chief curator of TED, described his TED talk as “a different language about what architecture can aspire to be.”