And its covered outdoor waiting room and hallways, in this time of COVID, felt prescient.

Its central courtyard felt part medical center, part public gardens. A decade later, they have a staff of over 200, more than half of them Rwandan. They've built a maternity care center in Malawi, a cholera hospital in Haiti, schools, all with the same principles of air flow, beauty, and creating jobs. They decided to become a nonprofit architecture firm, to work on projects that otherwise couldn't afford high-priced designs. So when Murphy offered to volunteer on a Partners In Health project in Rwanda the following summer, of 2007, Dr. But the way the incentive structure is set up is, 'Hey, you give us money, we'll design something for you.' Dr. Lesley Stahl: Why weren't architects attracted to working with you? I mean a lot of them care about the poor.ĭr. We're building schools.' And so when I went up to him afterwards to ask, you know, 'Who are the architects that you're working with?' He said, 'You know, architects have never asked us how they could be of service to what we're doing, so we often have to do it ourselves.' Michael Murphy: He said, 'We're building hospitals. Paul Farmer, who had founded the nonprofit Partners In Health to provide medical care for the neediest populations around the world. During first semester, Murphy went to a talk by one of his idols, Dr.

Why a non-profit architecture firm is staffing-up with filmmakersīut not so much about how architecture could help people and communities.

Michael Murphy: We were learning about the heroism of architecture, the beautiful sculptures, the names of the famous architects. But as they dove in, both found something wanting in the curriculum. Alan Ricks and Murphy became fast friends as first year students at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

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