Murray Fraser (architect)

Fraser is General Editor for the 21st Edition of the retitled Sir Banister Fletcher's Global History of Architecture. As the most extensive world survey of the subject to date, it was awarded the 2020 Colvin Prize by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

In 2018 Fraser received the Annie Spink Award for Excellence in Architectural Education from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

In 2013 he published an edited collection on Design Research in Architecture which is now a standard work on the topic. He also edits the UCL Press book series of that same title alongside his Bartlett colleague Jonathan Hill and Lesley Lokko of the African Futures Institute in Ghana.

Consultancy work with Nasser Golzari and Yara Sharif in the Palestine Regeneration Team (PART) led to involvement in two prize-winning projects in the West Bank: the revitalization of the historic centre of Birzeit that won a 2013 Aga Kahn Award, and the Women’s Eco-Kitchen in Beit Iksa that was given a 2014 Holcim Sustainability Award.

Trained as an architect and architectural historian at the Bartlett School of Architecture, he taught at Oxford Brookes University and Westminster University prior to rejoining the Bartlett in July 2011. From 2012-19 he served as Vice-Dean of Research for UCL’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment.

His next book, Architecture and the ‘Special Relationship’: The American Influence on Post-War British Architecture, won the 2008 President’s Research Award from the RIBA as well as the 2008 Bruno Zevi Book Prize from the International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA) for best publication in the field that year.

He was formerly editor of The Journal of Architecture from 2007–12, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of the ARENA Journal of Architectural Research (AJAR).

He co-founded the UK’s Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) in 2003 and the Architectural Research in Europe Network Association (ARENA) in 2013.

Fraser’s academic writings include pioneering studies in post-colonialism, cultural studies, globalisation theory and design research. His early research looked into links between architecture and colonial policy in Ireland, with his doctorate being published in 1996 as John Bull’s Other Homes: State Housing and British Policy in Ireland, 1883-1922.

Fraser worked as a housing architect in the 1980s for the London Borough of Haringey, before joining Architype Architects to carry out the refurbishment of a local community centre in Wapping. The renovation design for his own house in north London was highly commended in a 2003 RIBA competition.

Murray Fraser (born 7 July 1958, Glasgow, Scotland) is Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL).