Walking underwater
Meet the engineer behind some of the most famous underwater buildings around the world
Michael Murphy certainly has made a name for himself within the underwater structural design and engineering landscape, considering it’s a sector that many of us didn’t know existed in the first place. From engineering one of the first ever underwater restaurants in the Maldives, to international aquarium designs, a world-first underwater villa and even the Kelly Tarlton's we all know and love, the Auckland local has spent 40 years putting his stamp on a very niche strand of engineering. Courtney Devereux has a cuppa and a chat with the man behind the innovations.
Structural engineering is a highly mathematical, careful process that even in basic terms comes with a host of problems to factor in when creating any type of structure. Now put that structure under water, add environmental factors, gravity pressure changes and times the price by ten. Those kinds of engineering designs are where Auckland engineer Michael Murphy comes in.
For over 40 years, Murphy has been the go-to for a lot of ambitious and predominantly water associated structures. From aquariums, pools, restaurants and underwater bedrooms, Murphy has pitched and carried out a host of different projects in his career. His multi-tasking abilities have shown over the years that it’s a healthy dose of the Kiwi ‘give it a go’ spirit mixed with finite perfect and careful calculations that combine to present the impossible.
Murphy says getting his structures to where they are now didn’t happen quickly, as each project was a learning opportunity for the next. Yet he often has a very nonchalant attitude when talking about the technicalities of multimillion-dollar projects, saying a lot of it comes down to trust.
“It is very much an experimental thing what we do, particularly the first few ones. A lot of what we did hadn’t been done before, often you just had to trust the people in your team,” Murphy says. “But you can’t be there all the time. The thing is, even with the one we did in the Maldives, we couldn’t even test sink it first. We use these huge cranes and ships and they’re huge and expensive to use. Sometimes you just have to sink it, cross your fingers and hope you’ve plugged all the holes up.”
Closer to home, Murphy has been involved with many different projects in New Zealand, including Kelly Tarlton's and the Sea Lion viewing enclosure at the Auckland Zoo. But Murphy’s career didn’t get off to a glamorous start making multimillion-dollar underwater villas.
“The first things I did was cooler storage, really exciting stuff that was,” he says. “But that lead into engineering aquariums, then into underwater tunnels like the ones we did for Kelly Tarlton's and following that came the bigger projects internationally.”
Following Kelly Tarlton's, Murphy went on to create the Manly aquarium in Sydney, then moved on to projects in Perth and Darwin. His international career started when he and several others were asked to pitch an idea for Singapore’s underwater restaurant.
“I think we had only about a week to get a whole pitch together, including design and pricing. Amazingly enough, we won the pitch, and so that began my international structures of that kind overseas.”
Since the success of the first Singapore structure, Murphy has been the go-to for creating bigger and bolder copies of his original work.
All awe inspiring
Murphy has some interesting insights to the projects we tend to take at face value, showing that from a civil engineer perspective, anything is possible with a ‘can do’ attitude and an extra layer of acrylic, just to be safe.
“With Kelly Tarlton's, neither of us knew anything about this kind of aquarium he was wanting to build. He was a diver, so he knew a lot more surrounding marine life,” Murphy says. “He saw an underground aquarium overseas and wanted to replicate it here. For that we had to figure out how to make tunnels that curved. Back then we didn’t have the fancy software that is available now, so everything was
» done by hand calculations.”
Murphy says the project, which started back in 1980 and cost $3 million, took twice as long as it would now and twice the price due to creating something so extensive without technologic help like software and 3D model printing. Yet for him, having to figure out how to create an arch that withstands mounting water pressure was crucial to providing the awe-inspiring experience.
“Once you go around corners, you get all these different issues. Because it’s now an uneven side, all the water pressure wants to crush it downwards which leads to the silicon joints getting squished, so we had to design a certain joint for that too,” Murphy says.
“But these projects just spark awe in a lot of people. That was idea of the underwater restaurant as well, that when people walked down the spiral stairs, they’d have this magic moment seeing it all. The photos can never do it justice. These kinds of things spark imagination.”
Floating realistic expectations
Murphy says others in the sector can be ignorant of these issues, so his forward-thinking has helped keep him in front of the competition.
“Although it costs more money and takes more time, clients have just got to have those corners. But that’s the golden rule of any sort of display, you never want to see everything from the front door. You have to have the element of surprise; you have to be able to turn the corner and see something amazing. It all has to build till the final ‘zing’ at the end.”
A project Murphy is quite proud of is his 360-degree tunnel through an aquarium in San Sabastian, which to this day, is very highly regarded in the area. “That was one of our best designs,
» it was a full aquarium design with this