Michael P. Murphy: Our World In Ten Buildings

Michael P. Murphy will be at First Light Books on Tuesday, August 4, for an evening centered on his new book, Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who We Are and How We Live. He's an architect, educator, and writer, and the night is a chance to hear him talk through the work that went into the book.

Our World in Ten Buildings is built around ten landmark projects Murphy has worked on, and he uses them to pull back the curtain on the physical, political, and intellectual labor that goes into the built world. It's not just a tour of finished structures; he weaves in personal narratives, including the story of his father, so the architectural side sits alongside the human one.

Murphy's career has taken him across a wide range of scales and contexts. He's the founder and president of AMMA, a collaborative studio he started in 2024, and he was the founding CEO of MASS Design Group, which he stepped down from in 2022. Among the projects he's led are the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The Atlantic once called him "tomorrow's greatest designer," and he's given a TED main-stage talk and a 60 Minutes profile. These days he's the Thomas Ventulett Distinguished Chair of Architectural Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The event is on Tuesday, August 4, at First Light Books, 4300 Speedway, Austin, TX 78751. It's an evening with Murphy presenting the new book, so if you've ever wondered what actually happens behind the scenes of a major building project, this is a good place to start.