Heather Roberge, Murmur Founder and UCLA Professor, Dies at 55

Heather Roberge, the Los Angeles architect who founded the practice Murmur and chaired UCLA's architecture department, has died at 55.

Her death follows that of Orhan Ayyüce, the Los Angeles architect, writer, and critic who died on September 20. Earlier this year, AIA Los Angeles named Roberge and Ayyüce its 2026 "Educators of the Year" and had planned to honor both at this year's design awards ceremony. The chapter will now gather to remember them instead, crediting the two with pushing colleagues and students to rethink what architecture could mean.

"Heather was an extraordinary architect and a dedicated educator who helped shape the intellectual life of the department and inspired generations of students," said Lionel Popkin, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, who served as chair of the department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance while Roberge chaired AUD. "For our community, and especially for those of us who studied or worked closely with Heather, this is a profound loss."

Roberge was born in 1971 and grew up in Ohio. She entered The Ohio State University as an engineering major. An architecture survey course taught by Jacqueline Gargus and an introductory design studio drew her into the architecture program. She earned a Bachelor of Science in 1993 and a Master of Architecture in 1995, graduating summa cum laude and receiving the AIA Certificate of Excellence. She also completed coursework at the Architectural Association in London.

She trained in New York at Eisenman Architects, Architecture Research Office, and Davis Brody Bond, and also worked at Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum.

In 1999, Roberge cofounded Gnuform in Los Angeles with Jason Payne. The office belonged to what Roberge described as the first digital turn, when design moved from orthographic drawing into three-dimensional virtual space. Gnuform reached finalist status in the 2006 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program with its project Purple Haze.

Roberge founded Murmur in 2008. The practice extended her interest in computation and material production, drawing on techniques from fashion, metalworking, ceramics, and the building trades to test new forms of architectural assembly. Murmur's built and exhibited work includes the Succulent House, which received a 2011 AIA Next LA design merit award; En Pointe, an installation of columns at the SCI-Arc Gallery that received a 2015 AIA LA Merit award and later traveled to Ohio State's Banvard Gallery; and the Vortex House, nominated in 2014 for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Emerging Architecture Prize.

The Architectural League of New York selected Roberge for its Emerging Voices program in 2016. She recently published the book Fabricating Plasticity in Aluminum, which argued for the material prototype as a site of design innovation through a series of case studies.

At UCLA, Roberge's career spanned more than two decades. She began as a part-time lecturer in 2002, joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2006, and directed the undergraduate program in Architectural Studies for ten years. She served as interim vice chair before chairing the department from 2017 to 2020, and the university promoted her to full professor in 2021. Her teaching focused on material, computation, and manufacturing as ways to expand the vocabulary of building envelopes and assemblies. That work earned her the 2017 ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence.

"Heather held a special place in our community," said Mariana Ibañez, chair of UCLA AUD. "For countless students and colleagues, what mattered most was who she was in the studio and the classroom: a mentor who was endlessly curious, and unwavering in her belief in her students. Her passing is an enormous loss for so many in our community."

Roberge held visiting appointments throughout her career, including the Baumer Visiting Professorship at the Knowlton School of Architecture, the Shure Visiting Professorship at the University of Virginia, and the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professorship at Yale. She also taught at Pratt, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Washington University in St. Louis.

"Like all forms of creative expression, architectural ideas reflect the external worlds we learn to recognize as well as the internal disciplinary knowledge that is ever accumulating and transforming," Roberge said in an interview with her alma mater. "At its best, architecture imagines new futures."

Roberge leaves behind a husband and a son. Her final book, Fabricating Plasticity in Aluminum, stands as the latest statement of the material research agenda she pursued across Gnuform, Murmur, and two decades of teaching.