MASS Design Group

What does it take to rebuild a future after conflict?

The Iftin Peace Hub begins with a simple but powerful insight: healing is not separate from economic recovery, it is the foundation for it. Founded by Mohamed Ali Diini, a McNulty Foundation fellow, the initiative combines trauma-informed care, workforce training, and community-centered design to create pathways toward stability, dignity, and opportunity for young people in Somalia.

Together, Iftin Global and MASS are exploring how architecture and healing can work hand in hand to repair imagination and rebuild community.

If you’re attending SXSW London 2026, join Mohamed Ali Diini today at 5:25 PM for a conversation where he’ll share insights from Iftin Global’s work at the intersection of healing, community, and long-term recovery.

Around the world, maternal and newborn health systems are increasingly recognizing a simple but transformative idea: mothers and newborns should remain together throughout care whenever possible.

This model — known as Zero Separation — has been shown to improve bonding, breastfeeding, developmental outcomes, and newborn survival. But while healthcare systems are shifting toward more family-centered care, very little guidance exists for what these environments should actually look like spatially.

How should neonatal units change when parents are no longer treated as visitors, but as essential participants in care?

Through MASS’s Maternal & Newborn Health Lab, we recently released new design principles for Zero Separation newborn care as part of the expanded Delivering More toolkit, developed with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The resource translates emerging care models into practical spatial guidance for maternal and newborn health facilities.

At the same time, Principal Amie Shao joined collaborators from IHI and the World Bank in a new Devex article exploring why healthcare infrastructure must be treated as a core component of global health investments.

Together, these efforts reflect a growing recognition that care models cannot fully succeed without environments designed to support them.

Explore the article and toolkit at the links in bio.

Construction is soon approaching on the New Lots Branch Library in Brooklyn — a new educational and cultural space that honors the site’s history as a formerly-underacknowledged African Burial Ground in East New York. The team recently completed performance testing on the facade mock-up, simulating a range of weather conditions as construction kicks off.

Developed with the Brooklyn Public Library, Marble Fairbanks Architects, and a host of partners, the project reimagines the public library as a palaver in the tradition of West Africa - a civic resource and a place of remembrance, healing, and community connection. The design honors buried ancestors while supporting cultural, historical, and civc learning in East New York.

For too long, there has been a disconnect between people, places, and the impact of our built environment. At the Bio-Based Materials Collective (BBMC) 2026 Summit in the Hudson Valley, home to the MASS Fringe Cities Design Lab and office in Poughkeepsie, our goal was to strengthen those relationships.

Bound by a culture of collaboration and generosity, 150+ leaders across agriculture, forestry, finance, and design gathered to bridge the gap between fields and finished buildings.

The BBMC 2026 Summit just wrapped, and the momentum is palpable. We spent our days:
Learning on-site at organic farms, within experimental forests and inside wonderful architecture.
Listening to a dozen organizations share their latest insights.

Contributing to ongoing initiatives to scale up the use of bio-based materials in North America.

A huge thank you to Scenic Hudson for hosting us at the newly opened Northside Hub, and our speakers and attendees for contributing their collective intelligence. We aren’t just talking about a plant-based building industry; we’re growing it.

Ready to be part of the solution?
👉 biobasedcollective.org/about

Cover Image:
Summit Imagery:

This Mother’s Day, we’re honoring the spaces where life begins.

This year, MASS launched a new Maternal & Newborn Health Lab centered around a very personal and universal question: How can we design spaces that save lives and honor life? Led by Principal and mother Amie Shao, MASS’s maternal and newborn health work is not just a collection of projects — it’s part of a broader movement to reimagine spaces that support safer, more respectful, and more human experiences of care.

From Malawi to Massachusetts, we are working alongside healthcare providers, governments, midwives, and communities to design birth environments that support evidence-based care grounded in dignity, trust, and cultural belonging. Through initiatives like Delivering More, developed with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, we’re helping translate lessons from real-world projects into tools that can improve maternal and newborn care at scale.

On a podcast episode of Play with Matches, Amie shares a perspective that’s hard to ignore: design isn’t a backdrop to care—it’s part of care itself. Listen now to hear how we are working together with global partners to reshape maternal health—and what happens when systems start to move together. Link to the podcast and the Delivering More Toolkit in bio.

In a conversation on Architectural Record’s DESIGN:ED podcast, Alan Ricks and Sierra Bainbridge share MASS’s approach to practice—one rooted in listening first, designing with community, and committing to outcomes you measure in decades.

From rethinking healthcare delivery alongside Partners in Health () in the world’s most resource-constrained communities to building the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (), they unpack what it takes to let go of preconceived ideas; build local supply chains and economies; integrate landscape and architecture as one interconnected system; and use design to restore biodiversity, reduce carbon, and strengthen communities. The work provides hope and proof that we can create meaningful change faster than we created the problems.

Alan and Sierra share more on how more action, partnership and collaboration and less critique and competition is a means to beat worsening climate impacts and policies that will further hurt humans, agriculture and animals in a world already challenged with food insecurity. Influences of New York’s Highline, Toshiko Mori, SCAPE Landscape Architects (), Grace Farms (), “Father of the Natural World” Ian McHarg, and Bernie Krause are discussed.

If you’re feeling stuck between what’s possible and impact, this will help shift your perspective. 🎧 Listen to the episode + explore MASS’s new book, Seeking Abundance.

Photo 1: Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Photo 2: Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture
Photo 3: Ilima Primary School

MASS, in partnership with the City of Poughkeepsie, is hosting a special Open House for the public at the Cistern in College Hill Park, Poughkeepsie, on Saturday, May 9th, from 1-8:30 pm.

The Cistern is a massive underground space with a 14-second reverberation time. Because the echo lasts so long, the space functions as its own instrument—allowing you to harmonize with your own voice or instrument in real-time.

A lineup of performers will partake in an improvised experiment in reverberation within this unique space using both acoustic and electronic instrumentation, with a focus on long sustaining tones and resonant frequencies.

Between sets, the floor is yours, and we invite you to “play the Cistern,” to experiment with the acoustics.

The official line up will be announced May 7th. Stay tuned!

Photos by , from “Dance Fragments” a November 2024 performance by , music by and , lighting by Sam Stubblefield Studios and Ethan Rainbolt