MASS Design Group: Design & Craft in the Firm's Work

MASS Design Group is a nonprofit architecture firm committed to the idea that architecture is never neutral—it either heals or hurts. Founded in 2008 by six students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the name of the firm is derived from the motto “A Model of Architecture Serving Society.” MASS Design Group’s body of work reflects the belief that design can, and should, improve people’s lives. Over the last decade, MASS Design Group’s projects—from schools and hospitals in Rwanda, to a cholera treatment center in Haiti, to a healthcare center for homeless people in Boston, to a “waiting village” for pregnant women in Malawi—reflect its mission to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice, healing, and human dignity.

This program, developed by the Museum for the International Masonry Institute, centers on MASS Design's practice of honoring craftworkers through design and being committed to developing the next generation of designers and builders. Participants:

• Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Adjunct Curator, Director, Virginia Tech's Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center
• Emily Goldenberg, Design Director, MASS Design Group
• Theophile Uwayezu, Associate, MASS Design Group

The firm is the subject of a new exhibition at the National Building Museum, "Justice is Beauty: The Work of Mass Design Group," which will be available to experience when the Museum opens in 2021. http://go.nbm.org/massdesign