Honoring Legacy: Recent Losses and Their Imprint on Modern Architecture

On October 9, 2023, architect Lorcan O’Herlihy died at 64. His human-centric designs reshaped urban resilience. Based in Los Angeles, O’Herlihy founded Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) in 1994, crafting over 100 projects that reexamined how people work, live, and gather. His death invites reflection on his contributions to the built environment.

O’Herlihy’s Mariposa1038 in Los Angeles (2014) integrated sustainability and social equity. This multi-family housing solution redefined density in a sprawling city. His ethos extended across LOHA’s portfolio, from affordable housing to arts campuses, positioning design as a transformative agent. As architecture critic Paul Goldberger noted in Vanity Fair, O’Herlihy “demanded that architecture serve as more than a hollowed aesthetic exercise—it had to participate in the life of its city.”

Glenn Murcutt’s death in August 2023 also marked the end of an era. The Australian architect and Pritzker Prize laureate (2002) championed a ‘touch the earth lightly’ philosophy, crafting buildings that harmonize with their surroundings. His role as a ‘sole practitioner’ allowed for an uncompromising focus on detail, exemplified by the operability of louvers in Magney House (1984).

While O’Herlihy and Murcutt practiced in different contexts, both exhibited a critical sensitivity to their environments. Murcutt’s work engaged with landscape through vernacular materials. O’Herlihy engaged more directly with urban fabric. Their designs resisted the abstraction often found in projects labeled as ‘global.’ Locality—whether in eucalyptus-laden rural Australia or sun-drenched Los Angeles—remained their guiding principle.

These architects leave behind a dual legacy. Their buildings endure as responses to their time. More significantly, they sow seeds for future discourse. O’Herlihy’s focus on urban density challenges future housing solutions, while Murcutt’s reverence for site demands a recalibration of architectural priorities in the face of climate crisis. As architectural historian David Leatherbarrow remarked in Architectural Review, “Legacy isn’t just what is built; it’s what continues to be built upon.”

The architectural community has long grappled with how to honor practitioners posthumously. Retrospectives like the 2022 Venice Biennale’s tribute to Lina Bo Bardi serve as celebrations and critiques, complicating hagiographic tendencies. A similar consideration will arise in how O’Herlihy and Murcutt’s works are archived and exhibited. Will their contributions be framed as artifacts of an era or as active provocations for today’s challenges?

Institutions that supported their work also bear responsibility. The Australian Institute of Architects awarded Murcutt the Gold Medal in 1992, while the Architectural League of New York recognized O’Herlihy in their Emerging Voices program in 2004. These organizations must ensure these legacies remain accessible to emerging architects.

What remains unresolved is whether the profession will internalize the lessons these practitioners offered. Modern market pressures often push firms toward standardization and spectacle. Both O’Herlihy and Murcutt resisted these trends. O’Herlihy’s adaptive reuse strategies in projects like the Clifton Oden School (2018) and Murcutt’s insistence on solo authorship underscore distinct forms of resistance: one against waste, the other against dilution of vision.

The deaths of these figures compel the profession to look forward. The question is not how to replicate their methods but how to honor their intentions. How can architecture today engage meaningfully with context? What does it mean to design, as Murcutt would say, lightly?

The answers lie in interrogating not just the architects we’ve lost but the systems in which they worked. This task falls to architects, critics, educators, and institutions tasked with stewarding these legacies into the future.