Muir Architecture

Amy Muir (Melbourne, 1975) founded her office in Melbourne in 2016. Work ranges from high-end residential, commercial and public buildings to smaller-scale projects such as exhibition displays. The approach at Muir is to sustain civic architecture that involves the community and safeguards the spirit and memory of place.

An example is Doubleground (2018), a permanent sculptural installation made with the landscapers Openwork in the Grollo Equiset Garden at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, a building designed by the architect Roy Grounds. Doubleground was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2019 National Award for Small Project Architecture. By echoing forms and fragments of the NGV building, the architects created an unexpected chasm-like path seemingly without beginning or end, open to be explored by visitors and form a new spatial memory of Grounds’ architectural language.

Also at the NGV, Muir designed the display for the 2013 Contemporary Jewellery Exhibition, a folded-steel shelf running along a 37-metre corridor, playing with the vicinity and distance of viewers to the jewellery. Amy Muir has a degree in interior design and architecture from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, where she now teaches. Holding a holistic design vision, she considers the concept of interiors to be a whole with the external shape.

This is seen at Law Street House (2011) in Melbourne, a row house built with Bruno Mendes on the tight site of a demolished cottage from 1880. Responding to the constraints of its context with sensitivity, the plate-steel facade remains blank to conceal the second storey, which unavoidably is lit only at the back through irregularly shaped windows. In her role as Victorian president of the Australian Institute of Architects, Amy Muir liaises with government agencies to advocate the importance of architecture that stands in dialogue with the community.