Architect Alan Ricks Uses Design to Create More Equitable World, Speaking Thursday

The next Dallas Architecture Forum event will feature an evening with Alan Ricks, an architect and urban strategist whose work focuses on design innovation and health infrastructure development, using design to advance a more equitable world.

Ricks is the Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of MASS Design Group in Boston, an impact-driven architecture and design firm focused on community design for underserved populations around the world. The firm began with the design and construction of the critically acclaimed Butaro Hospital in Rwanda and has since expanded to twelve countries on three continents.

Ricks will speak Thursday, Dec. 10, at Magnolia Theatre in West Village. There is a reception at 6:15 p.m., followed by his lecture at 7 p.m.

The projects of MASS Design Group span research, policy, education, and strategic planning that provide infrastructure, buildings, and the human and physical systems necessary for growth, dignity, and well-being. Their bottom line is designing and constructing better buildings,
and empowering the people who build them and using good design to save and improve lives around the world.

“I believe architecture improves our lives and we can design the process to create social value,” Ricks said. “We can demand that our built environment makes a radically positive impact in society.”

Among Mass Design’s major initiatives are the Center for Global Health in Uganda, medical centers for treatment of cholera and tuberculosis in Haiti, and the Africa Center for Peace in Rwanda. Many of the studio’s projects result from research initiatives supported by the National Institute for Health in collaboration with faculty from the Harvard School of Public Health.

“The truth is, that the perception of architecture is that it has limited value beyond being the luxury of the very rich,” Ricks said in TEDCity2.0 talk in 2014. “Today, I can say Rwanda has taught me the most important things I know about architecture, but when we got there, we found out there wasn’t even a word  in the local language for architect…I learned that architecture wasn’t about simply a completed building, but about the process that created it.”

Ricks was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, which “recognizes the most extraordinary leaders of the world under the age of 40.” He is also Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and was previously recognized by Forbes as a member of its “30 Under 30” honorees. Alan is also a regular guest lecturer at Harvard, McKinsey and Company, AIA events, and other conferences.

He is a graduate of Colorado College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Ricks was named by Fast Company magazine as one of the world’s 10 Most Generous Designers.

Under the leadership of cofounders Michael Murphy and Ricks, MASS has been named a finalist for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, and received the World Architecture News Effectiveness Award, the Architectural League Emerging Voices Award, Healthcare Design Changemaker Award, the Curry Stone Design Prize, and Contract Magazine’s Designer of the Year.

MASS’s first book, Empowering Architecture, focuses on the Butaro Hospital design process. With co-founder Michael Murphy, Ricks writes for journals including The Journal of Architecture, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, as well as for the Huffington Post. Features on MASS include Wired magazine, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and in architecture and design publications including Interior Design, Architectural Record, Metropolis, and Domus.

Lectures are free for Dallas Architecture Forum members. General admission is $20, and full-time student admission is $5. Tickets can be purchased at the door before each lecture.

Here is a TED talk by architect Alan Ricks: