Joe Christa Giraso Presents Mass Design Group | THE WORLD AROUND SUMMIT 2024

The World Around & The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum present THE WORLD AROUND SUMMIT 2024.

MASS Design Group is a 200-strong non-profit joining architects, engineers, ecologists, and more to put communities and their environments at the center of the design, creating an architecture that promotes social justice and projects new possibilities for the future. The name is an acronym: ‘Model of Architecture Serving Society.’

At the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (@rica_rwanda), MASS is placing this mission statement at the center of its approach at a whole new scale. Testing low-carbon construction methods, sourcing almost all their materials from regional suppliers, and empowering local communities through their continued participation, the project aims to maximize impact while treading lightly on the earth, across the 3,400-acre site and beyond.

Our Summit speaker Joe Christa Giraso is a landscape architect on the MASS team, overseeing the conservation of the savannah woodlands on site. Through “building deep relationships with collaborators [and] learning from and exchanging lessons learned,” Giraso aims to promote a holistic understanding of how our built environments are made, nurturing a deeper notion of ‘sustainability,’ rooted in context, communities, and care.

Program for the full event available to download at https://theworldaround.com/program/

This presentation has been edited and was part of THE WORLD AROUND SUMMIT 2024, presented by The World Around and the Guggenheim Museum in New York on Saturday, May, 11 2024. The event was hosted in partnership with The World Around Global Cultural Partner Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.

To find out more about The World Around's programming or to get in touch, visit https://www.theworldaround.com