Kelley Van Dyck Murphy

Kelley Van Dyck Murphy is an assistant professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In the College of Architecture, she teaches design studios and seminar courses in digital fabrication and representation. She is the co-director of Van Dyck Murphy Studio, a multidisciplinary architecture and design collaborative based in St. Louis, Missouri. The practice engages in built and speculative projects at the scales of objects, installations, and environments, focusing on work that explores materiality, craft, and experiential narratives. Recently, Van Dyck Murphy studio was among the winning designers for the Alleyway Project, an international public art competition that will result in the re-envisioning of an alleyway in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are also in the process of designing and fabricating a ceramic 3D-printed masonry screen wall in downtown St. Louis. Recent work has been exhibited at the Des Lee Gallery, the Sheldon, and the Farrell Learning Center.

In 2019 and 2020, Kelley was awarded grants from Washington University and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis for research that explores the role of emerging design and fabrication technologies in traditional and new materials. Recently, Kelley collaborated with the Kemper Art Museum for the member program “Textural Translations: Exploring the Print Collection through Ceramic 3D Printing,” where she drew from the permanent print collection to produce a set of ceramic 3D-printed objects. In addition, she is a co-principal investigator in the Mellon Foundation-funded interdisciplinary research project Beauty in Enormous Bleakness: The Design History of the Interned Generation of Japanese American Designers. The research project explores architecture’s relationship to issues of immigration, exclusion, and cultural identity in the 20th century through the documentation and preservation of the histories and experiences of the interned generation of Japanese Americans.

Kelley earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes College and her Master of Architecture degree from Washington University in St. Louis. She has practiced architecture in St. Louis and Atlanta, where she worked on projects ranging from urban planning to exhibitions.