Free and open to the public

Founder and principal of MASS Design Group, Michael Murphy, writes in the introduction to the firm’s beautiful monograph, Justice is Beauty, that “architecture is not agnostic about ethics.” While Murphy was still a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he was hired by Paul Farmer to design a hospital in Rwanda. MASS has gone on to design many hospitals and schools in Africa and Haiti, and their partnership with artist Hank Willis Thomas produced the winning entrant for Boston’s MLK Memorial. Murphy may be best known, however, for working with Bryan Stevenson to design the enormously moving and monumental National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. He and his partners at MASS, which stands for Model of Architecture Serving Society, believe that good design is not solely for the wealthy—that the search for beauty is the search for justice. Join Jared Bowen, host of Open Studio on GBH, for an inspiring conversation with Michael Murphy. This session is sponsored by Ann and Graham Gund, with media sponsorship by GBH.