DAISY AMES

Harvard GSD students work to redesign hospitals in Rwanda to reduce poverty through architecture. Vote for MASS here. Check out MASS Group official website here.

MASS is an architectural design firm working in resource-limited settings to build social value through design. We work in these contexts to incubate locally-grown design communities, and to train architects to be culturally sensitive and committed to applying their skills to improve the quality of life of underserved populations. MASS asks architects the hard questions: if design is a service, who does it serve? If offered only to a few, what is the value of good design? We believe good design is the synthesis of complex problems into solutions that support well-balanced communities.

In 2007 there were fewer than 10 architects in the entire country of Rwanda, as many had fled or been killed during the genocide, and the status of most buildings were, as a result, poorly designed and creating health hazards for their inhabitants. We address this two-fold problem holistically, creating training programs to cultivate a next generation of Rwandan design leaders, while providing solutions to real projects in the training process. Our design of medical facilities in Rwanda with Partners in Health will not only serve the patients of the facilities and their families, but will benefit a global community by seeking solutions to diverse problems – from the airborne transmission of Tuberculosis to job creation and economic development in a community. Between the local and global scales, we recognize that a sustainable commitment to social change is made not only through the holistic design of buildings, but also through the design process’s capacity to generate reverberant impacts. (via social innovation)