Sarah Murray

Sarah is passionate about creating special places - a dynamic and highly respected leader in urban design and placemaking, she has over 20 years’ experience in masterplanning and architecture across the UK and internationally. As co-founder and Director of edge Urban Design, Sarah brings clarity, rigour, and delivery-focus to everything she leads – making the complex simple and the visionary achievable.

With a passion for fresh and forward-thinking ideas - making ‘different’ great - Sarah believes in creating people-focused places that are sustainable, landscape-led, and rooted in community. She is known for her ability to turn ambitious ideas into deliverable reality, balancing creativity with viability, and always maintaining sight of the bigger picture. Her architectural background and structured design thinking ensure robust and efficient outcomes at every scale. Her natural aptitude for resolving problems ensures Sarah’s leadership style is approachable, empowering, and highly collaborative, enabling her to build trusted relationships with clients, stakeholders, and multidisciplinary teams.

Sarah is experienced in leading complex residential and mixed-use projects ranging from 1 to 10,000 units, including major urban extensions, new settlements, and award-winning regeneration schemes. Her design philosophy centres on making the most of natural assets, working with – not against – site constraints to create places that are contextually sensitive. Community engagement is integral to her process, ensuring proposals provide a legacy for generations to come. 

At edge, Sarah works in partnership with co-founder Hannah Smart. As trailblazers in the industry, they bring curiosity, enthusiasm and a “why not” approach to everything they do. Between them they amassed an extensive portfolio of development opportunities and have delivered planning permissions for in excess of 40,000 new homes across the UK.

Sarah brings a rare duality to her leadership – combining creative vision with pragmatic delivery, ensuring the ‘engine’ of edge runs with clarity, stability and resilience. While Sarah leads the operational strength of the practice, Hannah nurtures its creative heart. This unique balance – between rigour and soul – defines the ethos of edge: where delivery and design integrity go hand in hand, and where innovative ideas are grounded in practical excellence. Sarah and Hannah are pivotal in the success of the practice and are proud to be leading a growing team into its next chapter.

Beyond edge, Sarah plays an active role in shaping the wider profession. She sits on various Design Review Panels, is a trustee of the Thame Community Land Trust, a mentor with Women in Planning, and a regular guest speaker and critic at Oxford Brookes University, supporting the next generation of urban designers at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.