The Humanity of Design Thinking
(Via Architect Magazine)
Michael Murphy studied at Harvard GSD
Michael Murphy is the executive director of Boston-based MASS Design Group, studied at Harvard GSD.
It’s important that we, as architects, care about words like “context,” “dignity,” “social outcomes,” and “evaluation.” We also have to have the capability of investing in those concepts—through how you spend your time, how you treat your staff, and the projects you take on. The question for our firm is, “How are architects making progress in a measurable way?” We have six full-time researchers and we are making a significant financial investment in measurability, which has forced us to recalibrate our firm. We’ve forged three great partnerships lately: with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on the history and future of hospitals; with Atlantic Philanthropies and the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, to build a tool set to evaluate the impact of architecture on communities, organizations, and place; and with Atul Gawande’s Ariadne Labs, to look at a research protocol that asks how the design of operating rooms affects the rate of Caesareans.
Read more about Michael Murphy and MASS Design Group here.
