Design Like Glenn Murcutt
Touch the earth lightly.
He turned it into a career.
Learn quiet mastery from the lone craftsman of sustainable design. Discover how climate, landscape, and modesty can produce architecture the whole world studies and admires.
Your buildings will touch the earth lightly.
- Read land like a book — designing from sun, wind, and rain before anything else.
- Build lightly always — leaving every site better than the day you found it.
- Master passive comfort — cooling and warming buildings without leaning on machines at all.
- Work small, think deep — proving that modest scale never has to limit significance.
- Refine a personal language — perfecting a personal voice instead of chasing every passing trend.
- Practice with integrity — choosing projects by principle rather than by the price attached.
Built by one of the most-read architecture platforms in the world.
RTF | Rethinking The Future has spent over a decade publishing the ideas, projects and voices shaping architecture — and now brings that depth to learning. Every course is researched, written and produced by the RTF team.
The earth notices how you build. So do juries.
A clear path. Seven steps.
Everything unlocks instantly with membership · learn at your own pace
If you see yourself here, start today.
A few hours from now, you could already see differently.
My environmental design was all software and no instinct. Murcutt's discipline of reading landscape, wind and rain through observation grounded me. The small rural house I designed after this course needs almost no active systems.
Simple by design.
Watch
Short, focused video lessons — each one a single idea, clearly explained.
Apply
End every lesson with a small task that pushes your real project forward.
Transform
Watch your work develop a point of view that is unmistakably yours.
Answered simply.
Murcutt works alone on small buildings — how does that translate to my context?
His constraint is his gift to you: every lesson is at a scale one architect can absorb and apply. Climate-responsive detail, cross-ventilation and site sensitivity transfer to any practice.
Is this the most practical of the masters courses for sustainable design?
Arguably yes. Murcutt achieves environmental performance through design intelligence rather than technology, which is the cheapest and most robust kind of sustainability.
Does his rural Australian focus limit the relevance?
No. The specifics are Australian; the discipline of reading sun, wind and landscape before drawing is universal.
Do I need any prior experience?
No. Every course starts from where you are and builds up step by step, in plain language.
Is this software training?
No — software changes yearly. The thinking you learn here lasts a career.
How does it work?
Short video lessons with a small practice task after each. Any device, your pace.
What does membership include?
One membership unlocks every course on RTF Academy — all 450+, nothing sold separately. And you stay in control: cancel anytime in one click, and you will never be charged again.
Ready to see your work change?
Your next project could be the one that feels truly yours.
- 7 Sections
- 25 Lessons
- 4 Hours
- Introduction to Glenn Murcutt3
- Principles of Environmental Architecture4
- Materials, Structure & Detail4
- Iconic Projects & Design Lessons4
- Landscape, Climate & Human Experience3
- Representation & Visualization3
- Applying the Glenn Murcutt Approach4
Reviews
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My environmental design was all software and no instinct. Murcutt's discipline of reading landscape, wind and rain through observation grounded me. The small rural house I designed after this course needs almost no active systems.
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