The College of Architecture will kick off the 2016-17 Hyde Lecture Series at 4 p.m. Sept. 16 in Richards Hall Room 15 with Cristina Murphy, Hyde Chair of Excellence, on “DESIGNING FOR LIFE. Lives, Places and Institutions.”

The Hyde Lecture Series is a long-standing, endowed public program. Each year the college hosts compelling speakers in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning that enrich the ongoing dialog around agendas which are paramount to the design disciplines and university graduates.

Murphy will explore the relationship between community and the built environment. This relationship implies care toward social, economic, cultural and evolutionary dynamics of people that live in special ways, in special places. Murphy relates architecture and the built environment to these dynamics and attempts to understand how far this world is designed, how far it shall be left to nature and ultimately, how far people are able to transform it or simply adapt to it.

The lecture is an introduction of essential elements that have and are still characterizing Murphy’s role as an architect: the way she looks at the world including her academic background, her experiences and the way she reacts to that and how it translates to her and her team’s projects.

Murphy is the co-founder of XCOOP, a think tank known for its flexible and permeable approaches to contemporary living spaces. Through XCOOP, she investigates the dynamics between social circumstances and the built environment, establishes creative collaborations among a number of partners and stake holders in developing countries, and facilitates creative exchanges that induce innovative design concepts.

She has worked with architect Rem Koolhaas on commercial and cultural projects around the world, including the CCTV-TVCC buildings in Beijing; the Post Occupancy special issue of Domus magazine on OMA’s work; and the upgrade of the Sant’Elia social housing neighborhood in Cagliari, Italy. With XCOOP, Murphy is developing plans for two schools in Mombasa, Kenya, and Buaw, South Sudan; and a sustainable, participatory, social housing development in Port-au-Prince.

The lecture is free and open to the public.