Lesley Stahl: Do you think that COVID will change architecture for everybody?
Michael Murphy: Everyone around the world is going through a shift in their understanding of the buildings around us. That they may make us sicker, that they could make us healthier if they were better designed.
— CBS News
MASS founding principal and executive director Michael Murphy discussed the curative father-son restoration project that led to his enrollment at Harvard and subsequent experience with the firm’s award-winning early Butaro District Hospital project in Rwanda, which helped cement the place of air flow as one of its three simple design mandates long before the impacts of COVID-19 were noted across the industry.
Murphy's desire to give back to his hometown of Poughkeepsie through various retrofit projects is also highlighted along with a site visit to the in-progress Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture campus, which comes well-appointed with furnishings created by Managing Director Christian Benimana's MASS.Made studio in Kigali. “Beauty matters,” Murphy told 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl finally about the approach that led to last year's AIA Firm Award win. “Spaces around us that are designed with beauty say that we matter as individuals.”
2 Comments
Until seeing this video I didn't realize the stone on the hospital was cladding, not structural.
Very nice profile on the firm.
MASS has an inspiring story: Architectural students from atypical backgrounds got fed up with navel-gazing theories and games of representation, taking it upon themselves to build for a greater cause. Fighting for the opportunity to build was part and parcel of the design process from their inception. They've successfully expanded their practice from the (very impressive) Rwandan hospitals they designed and helped construct as students to memorials and public buildings in the US.
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