MASS Design Lab (MDLab) is a global innovation laboratory, uniting design and public health to stymie some of the greatest global health crises of our time—cholera, tuberculosis, and the transfer of other diseases in the buildings intended to heal us: hospitals. Use the arrows to navigate and learn more.
Design for the built environment encompasses not only buildings, but also bridges, parks, neighborhoods and cities. Solving for these specific infrastructures is often thought of as a way to address the world’s problems – how to achieve improved shelter, sanitation, or access to energy. Yet design alone does not always solve these problems. Designs are frequently developed in isolation from the places and people they serve. These well-intentioned designs unintentionally often do more harm than good by importing building systems and technologies that are inappropriate within the environmental context and for end users.
With Shaw Contract Group, CGI, and other key stakeholders , we will address the crisis of the built environment by establishing a global innovation laboratory that will cultivate innovation, research, and development.
A single, highly collaborative lab, dually located in vastly different economies, will create a new synergistic model for cultivating global perspectives and solutions. With one hub to be located in Africa and one in North America, MDLab will help re-imagine the built environment and help to recalibrate the parameters of what design and innovation can achieve.
We believe there are three imperatives for success: appropriate design methodologies focused on immersion, strategic partnerships with local and global stakeholders, and education including curriculum design and skills development. Each directly and indirectly affects lives through economic, education, and environmental impact.
From building design to product design, MDLab will be a laboratory to test, implement, and bring to market solutions that will effect systemic change in our cities, in our homes, in our lives. The result will not only provide a venue for re-thinking and re-designing our built environments, but it will train entrepreneurs, inspire new educational programs, and foster the necessary R&D process required for newly designed products to actually solve, not simply address, the world’s greatest challenges.
MDLab is continually seeking new partners, investors, projects, and fellows. Please email info@mass-group.org for more information.
