Conventional architecture doesn’t do enough for the people it serves. We work to expand the tenets of design because we believe every project should embody our philosophy that Justice is Beauty.
Service Team
Alan Ricks, AIA, Int FRIBA
Founding Principal & Chief Design Officer
Alan Ricks, AIA, Int FRIBA
Founding Principal & Chief Design Officer
Alan is a Founding Principal and the Chief Design Officer of MASS Design Group. He leads strategy and design of the 100-person firm, which has projects in over a dozen countries that range from design to research to policy—a portfolio that continues to expand the role of design in advancing a more just world.
In 2017 Alan and MASS were awarded the National Design Award for Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. First launched at the White House in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the annual Awards program celebrates design as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of the impact of design through education initiatives.
In 2018 he and MASS received the Arts and Letters Award for Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Each year the Academy honors over 70 composers, artists, architects, and writers with awards and prizes. Recipients must be nominated by an Academy member and this year the jury included Annabelle Seldorf, James Polshek, Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, Steven Holl, Kenneth Frampton, and Thom Mayne.
Alan is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders with the World Economic Forum, a community of over 800 men and women selected under the age of 40, who operate as a force for good to overcome barriers that elsewhere stand in the way of progress. The community is made up of leaders from all walks of life, from every region of the world, and from every stakeholder group in society.
Currently, he is the William B. and Charlotte Shepherd Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and has previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He regularly speaks, writes, and creates films focused on the role of architecture in catalyzing social change. Chris Anderson, chief curator of TED, described his TED talk as “a different language about what architecture can aspire to be.”
He has a Bachelor of Arts from Colorado College and a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Butaro District Hospital. © Iwan Baan
Every project we take on is centered on the following core beliefs:
With each project, it is imperative that we invest in our planet, protecting it from environmental destruction and restoring its natural functions.
The places we design must be purposeful to those who inhabit them, and their impact must reach beyond the boundaries of the site to serve the broader community.
African Leadership University. © Iwan Baan
Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture
Architecture can affirm the links that bind us inextricably to one another, and it can influence communities beyond the creation of built forms, but through the creation of sustainable supply chains and reinvesting in the local economy.
Family Health Center on Virginia
Our work’s impact reaches beyond individual buildings. It plays a critical role in supporting communities in their efforts to confront history, shape new narratives, collectively heal, and project new possibilities for the future.
