Katherine Murray
Urbanist, Architect, Newshound, Storyteller
Katherine Murray is an architect, urban designer and the principal of Young Urbanists. Katherine is passionate about achieving better outcomes for cities and driving community engagement and urban education to reach these goals.
Hailing from Melbourne, Katherine has spent the past 20+ years living, working and studying in a range of global cities, including significant periods in Oxford, London, New York, Tokyo and Singapore.
Katherine is a registered architect, holding a BArch from RMIT University. As an urbanist she holds an MSc in Development Practice from Oxford Brookes University, is a graduate of LSE Cities ‘London and Global Cities’ program, and participated in the recent Gehl Institute ‘Bay Area Public Life Masterclass’. Katherine is also a mother to four Young Urbanists herself, with two girls and two boys aged seven to fourteen.
Prior to founding Young Urbanists, Katherine’s architectural and urban design work was focused on education and international development. She has been involved in complex projects in numerous cities and contexts: Katherine has designed primary and secondary schools for ’21st Century Learning’ in Melbourne and New York City, and assisted universities in Northeastern USA and California to reconfigure their campuses for a more student-centred public realm; she has devised masterplans for large civic projects in China and Singapore, as well as creating small scale, participatory urban interventions in New Delhi and Amman.
Through Young Urbanists, her work with the Singapore City Gallery, and with local and international schools, Katherine is advancing urban education and public participation – promoting the planning and design of liveable cities, and how these cities can sustainably support creativity, enterprise, civil society and active, multi-generational communities.