Ilima: Beyond Sustainability

Thatcher joined MASS in 2013 to document the construction and use of MASS Design Group’s health infrastructure in Rwanda. The resulting videos accompanied Alan Rick’s TED talk on how buildings can heal communities. Since then he has worked with MASS as a media producer to explore how video can be used as a unique tool to assess and convey the impact of our built environments. Thatcher obtained a BFA from the University of Colorado film studies program.

In 2014, Thatcher Bean helped establish a film production studio within MASS Design Group. Over the last five years, this studio’s unique capacity has been leveraged to document, illustrate, and promote the effects of the built environment on society. The studio has produced dozens of short films and interviewed over 100 of our building’s users, builders, and clients. In 2017 he directed and edited MASS’s first feature length film, Made In Ilima, which premiered at the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival. He has been a guest speaker at SXSW Eco, The Impact Building Summit in Washington D.C., A Better World by Design Conference at Brown University, is a frequent presenter at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and has served as a guest critic at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and presenter at the Yale School of Architecture.

Andrew leads the South Africa Lab, established to address regional issues of inequality in housing, environment, and health. He joined MASS in 2010 as a Design Fellow in Rwanda, where he worked on health, education, and housing projects across the region, including the Umubano Primary School, Mubuga Primary School, Butaro Doctors Housing, and Rwinkwavu Village Housing. In 2014, Andrew moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to serve as the project manager for the Ilima Conservation School where he supervised the construction management and documentation of the school.

He received a Masters of Science in Architecture and Building Technology from MIT where he was the recipient of a TATA Center Fellowship and the 2018 Tucker Voss award for Building Technology. Andrew completed his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Oregon.