profile
	Murphy|Davé’s two principals are Martin Murphy (BA hons Dip Arch RIBA) and Smita Davé (BA hons Dip Arch ARB). Between them, Martin and Smita have 30 years’ experience in the architectural field. Both Martin and Smita studied Design and Architecture at Portsmouth School of Architecture. Martin then worked in Dublin, where he was strongly influenced by the emerging Irish ‘rationalist’ architecture. He later joined the London RIBA gold medallist firm Scott Tallon Walker where, in the late 1980s, he consolidated his modernist approach. Smita spent her diploma year at the Nantes School of Architecture, France, majoring in Urban Studies with a thesis on the 18th century urban study of Nantes. She also undertook study trips to Russia, Finland, Berlin and India before working in private practice in London in the late 1980s. Her modernist approach is enhanced by an instinctive and intuitive response to space, texture, colour and aesthetics. Both Smita and Martin include amongst their influences the modern movement masters such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Luis Baraggan and artists such as Ben Nicholson. These Modernist influences form a solid foundation of their design approach, but are enlivened by a vibrant mix of current directions in art and architecture. Clarity of space, abundance of light where appropriate and choice of materials for performance as well as tactile quality and colour are all hallmarks of an approach unconstrained by one particular ideology, yet rigorous in its integrity. They founded Murphy|Davé in 1992.