Kelley Van Dyck Murphy

Kelley Van Dyck Murphy is an assistant professor of architecture in the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In her research and writing, she engages themes of identity, authorship, and context by investigating how materiality is entwined with larger cultural narratives. Murphy’s creative practice is situated between architectural design, urban intervention, and cultural storytelling, as exhibited through the materials and processes that produce them. Murphy is a partner and co-founder of the design practice AVV A, LLC, merging practice and research through built projects, including new construction, adaptive reuse, interiors, residences, and public art.

Murphy is a co-editor of the forthcoming volume, “Claying Architecture: Making Machine and Material Kin” (AR+D), which explores the role of clay 3D printing in contemporary digital practices through the concept of kinship. The publication builds on her research of 3D printed terracotta assemblies, including the built public art installation “Flora Field,” a winning entry from the InsiteSTL National Design Competition, which was constructed at the site of the Wainwright Building in 2023.

Since 2019, Murphy has been co-lead investigator with Heidi Aronson Kolk and Lynnette Widder (Columbia University), on the Divided Cities Mellon-funded collaborative research project, Beauty in Enormous Bleakness: The Interned Generation of Japanese American Designers. The project illuminates hidden histories — and largely untold narratives — about Japanese Americans designers’ World War II incarceration and postwar experiences. The project seeks to reframe this history through a different set of values — social and personal histories as expressed through material culture and its relationship to specific sites — while offering a more complete and inclusive reading of American design history. The research has evolved as an exhibition, podcast series, and the symposium, Moonscape of the Mind, which expanded on this research and brought an international group of architects, artists, and historians to WashU to present original research on Japanese American design after WWII Incarceration. With Kolk, Murphy is currently co-editing, “Beauty in Enormous Bleakness: The Legacies of Japanese American Incarceration in Postwar Design, Art and Architecture” (Bloomsbury), a series of object-focused essays that explore art and design projects pursued by survivors, accounting for the complex interplay between their most influential works, their lived experiences, and broader cultural events. In May, Murphy and Kolk will teach Dislocated: Memory, Forgetting, and the Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration, the 2025 American Culture Studies On Location travel-based course that investigates the cultural and material landscapes of Japanese American incarceration, giving special attention to the problems of memory associated with these events.

Murphy is a 2024-2025 Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellow, affiliate faculty with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity, and received the 2024-2025 Emerson Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2024, she was awarded the Diversity Achievement Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Murphy has served as an academic team leader for the Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop, convened by Carnegie Mellon, the University at Buffalo, and Boston Valley Terracotta. Her work has been funded by the Regional Arts Commission, the Downtown Public Partnership of St. Louis, the Ann Arbor Arts Commission, Landmarks Columbus Foundation, HOK, Cortex, and WashU. Murphy is the co-director of Fox Fridays, an interdisciplinary workshop series encouraging experimentation with tools, processes, and technology and lead the Sam Fox School’s pre-college Architecture Discovery Program from 2021-2024.

Murphy’s research and teaching aspires to support a more inclusive architectural history, and she is dedicated to advancing the conversations around diversity in architecture and design — including how we can improve access to architectural education. Since 2024, Murphy has been the faculty director for Washington University’s Alberti Program: Architecture for Young People, a pipeline program for students ages nine through fifteen from the St. Louis community.