Founded in 2008, MASS Design Group is a non-profit architecture firm that believes architecture is never neutral. It either heals or hurts. Our mission is to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity. Our first project was the design and building of the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda; a project of Partners In Health and the Rwandan Ministry of Health. Since then, MASS has expanded to work in over a dozen countries in Africa and the Americas.
Our work spans the design of buildings, research, policy, education, and strategic planning. Architecture is a mechanism that projects its values far beyond a building’s walls and into people’s lives and communities. To acknowledge that architecture has this kind of agency and power is to acknowledge that buildings, and the industry that erects them, are as accountable for social injustices as they are critical levers to improve the communities they serve. The stakes are too high, and the accountability too low, not to insist that architects do something to address these challenges. This is why we started MASS Design Group.
We set up MASS as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization to create a model of practice optimized to deliver maximum impact to our partners and the communities they serve. MASS Design Group is a 2017 recipient of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award to honor lasting achievement in American design.
