MASS Design Group

A Model of Architecture for Society (MASS) Design Group was founded in 2008 as a non-profit organization motivated by an idea for a different way of practice. MASS grew to include many colleagues and contributors who worked together to design and build the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda, a project of Partners In Health and the Rwandan Ministry of Health. Since then, the organization has grown to a team of 200 architects, landscape architects, engineers, builders, furniture designers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers representing 20 countries across the globe. MASS operates design labs including the Restorative Justice Design Lab in Boston; Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab in Sante Fe, N.M.; and the Food Systems and Fringe Cities Lab in Hudson Valley, N.Y. Recent work includes: African Leadership University flagship campus in Kigali, Rwanda; Family Health Center on Virginia in McKinney, Tx., MASS’s first completed U.S.-health project; and the Gun Violence Memorial Project on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. MASS published Justice is Beauty, commemorating 10 years of global work, and is the author of the forthcoming book, The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity, published by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.