Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy is an architect, artist, educator, and writer. His studio focuses on how space and place change our communities and ourselves.

Michael has led a number of internationally recognized public installations and architectures. He was the partner with Hank Willis Thomas on The Embrace sculpture in Boston as Executive Director and Founder of MASS Design Group, which he led until December 2022. He was also the lead designer of such projects as the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda, the National Memorial For Peace and Justice, in Montgomery Alabama, and the National Gun Violence Memorial, which debuted at the 2019 Chicago Architectural Biennial and will be featured at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston in Fall 2024.

Michael is the current Thomas Ventulett Chair of Architecture at Georgia Tech.

Michael has a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago, an M.Arch from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and lives in Boston with his wife and two children. 

Samuel Stubblefield

Samuel Stubblefield is an artist, composer, architectural designer, and technologist whose studio relentlessly pursues intuitive curiosities. Stubblefield sees his studio’s work as an extension of nature, a bridge to understanding and feeling, and a facilitator of deeper communal connections.

Stubblefield's works, spanning visual, sonic, performative, interactive, and immersive mediums, have been showcased alongside Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Koons, Michael Murphy, Yoko Ono, Keith Sonnier, Hank Willis Thomas, Richard Tuttle, and Lawrence Weiner. His music and compositions have included collaborations with Grammy-Award-winning musical artists, symphonies, and choruses, including vocalists from The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, The New York Metropolitan Opera, and numerous musicians, DJs, and bands.

The studio has multiple awards for its collaborations in the field of architecture and design across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Stubblefield lives in Manhattan with his wife, Sari, a hospice nurse. They care for infants and toddlers in the foster system and enjoy being outside together. His studio in upstate New York is the former studio of artist Frank Stella and shares walls with world-renowned art maker UAP.

Together, Murphy and Stubblefield have collaborated on The Gun Violence Memorial Project, the renewal of The Poughkeepsie Cistern in upstate New York, an exhibition of design and health at The Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Museum in New York, and various other art and design projects.