Hyde Chair of Excellence in Architecture for the fall semester of 2016
In 2009, Cristina Murphy co-founded XCOOP, a think tank that through its flexible and permeable approach, analyzes contemporary living and provides creative solutions within a wide range of disciplines. Through XCOOP, Cristina investigates the dynamics between social circumstances and the built environment, establishes creative collaborations among a number of partners and stake holders in developing countries, facilitating creative exchanges that induce innovative design concepts.
The topics that Cristina brings into the studio environment are strongly related to her background and current work with XCOOP. How do we organize and design the countryside and the small villages within a supportive network? Can design be the tool for reviving communities, proposing new perspectives on an otherwise unavoidable perception of decay? As a practicing architect, Cristina worked with Rem Koolhaas on a number of commercial and cultural projects around the world including the CCTV-TVCC buildings in Beijing, China; 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, she is developing plans for two schools in Mombasa, Kenya, and Buaw, South Sudan, and a sustainable, participatory, social housing development in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Cristina has been guest professor at the following educational institutions: University of Central America, San Salvador, El Salvador; University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy; Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands; Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Academy of Architecture and Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai, India.
She has been thesis mentor and supervisor at the School of Architecture and Society at the Politecnico di Milano, Milan Italy. In the United States, Cristina has been a teaching fellow at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. She is regular studio critic at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona; and has been an external reviewer at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona.
