Featured Personality Kelly Alvarez Doran is Senior Principal architect in MASS Design Group, a team of architects, landscape architects, engineers, builders, furniture designers, writers, film makers, and researchers across the globe, with offices in the US, London and Kigali. He leads the London office and oversees MASS’s work in Europe, West Africa, and Global Business Development. He has contributed an article in the February edition of rocagallery.com. The Doers. MASS is not a conventional architecturebe taken into account with respect to the full impact of a firm. It is integrated by more than 120material assembly, and in doing so we can work to unravel the complexity of our building systems in the same way professionals from different disciplines.chefs have been working to change our food systems. Why do you think this multidisciplinaryThey’re a decade ahead of us in this transition—we have approach is important for your practice?this decade to rebuild our systems. Multidisciplinarity is the only way to develop a truly holistic What do you think are the challenges that approach to a project. We have incrementally expanded young architects and designers will have the range of disciplines in our office, from originally just to face in the years to come? architecture to now encompass landscape architecture, geotechnical, civil, structural and MEP engineering, 1. Educate ourselves and become deeply familiar with the quantity surveying, construction management, interior means required to ensure that every project we work on and industrial design, carpentry, and communications. This is making dramatic steps towards climate positivity. To has fundamentally changed the way we operate because change such a slow-moving industry we need to start instead of the normal prime/sub agreements, we’re able immediately making demands of suppliers and builders to work across disciplines more fluidly through all stages to be sourcing and building differently. For example, if we of design in lockstep, and do so in the same room. all specified insulation made from natural, carbon positive Naturally this leads to more knowledge sharing, and as materials (as opposed to petrochemicals or stone) we’ll a result towards more informed, holistic decision-making create the market for innovation and drive the fossils out throughout a project. of the corner of our industry. At MASS the issue of sustainability has a2. Spend time with your supply chains. Get to know your holistic approach, that goes beyond energy masons, your carpenters, your framers. Ask them where they’re sourcing their materials now, and compare that largely on gravity systems to achieve pressure across the use and efficiency. What other issues do to how they would have done so a century ago. How project. Again, utilizing millennia-old techniques that we’ve you take into account when tackling a far afield was Gaudí sourcing the materials and labour seemingly lost sight of in “developed” contexts. new project, considering the current for his buildings? climate emergency situation? Is it in the3. Get used to retrofit. In the UK there is the RetroFirstIt is often said that traditional building architects’ and designers’ hands to limit campaign, and the EU has just launched a Circular techniques are more sustainable and Economy policy. We need to reduce the emissions of our should be recovered and implemented global warming? current building stock dramatically, and do so while not The built environment contributes to more than half of radically increasing the embodied emissions. 100% of in today’s construction. What is your annual GHG emissions. A large part of the scope of work emissions currently exist … so let’s start looking at what experience? What should we learn from in the construction industry has been historically defined by we have, and figure out how to improve it. Demolition the past in order to build a better future? architects, engineers, and planners … so if not us, who? and greenfield construction should be the last resort. Sustainability, as a mode of practice, has generally defined The future is more regional, and circular. Traditional buildings are reflective of a region’s material and environmental performance largely through the reduction MASS has carried out many projects inlabour, not the other way around. My current house—a of operational emissions, most commonly under the guise “traditional” working class house built in 1903 on the then of “energy efficiency.” Over the past 30+ years this has Africa, in places where water is a precious outskirts of London by a private developer—is built of in turn created a system of design and construction that resource and sanitary infrastructure is‘London Brick,’ on a stone foundation, with timber joists, has made buildings more layered, more complex, more almost nonexistent. How do you overcomefloated glass windows, and a slate roof. The vast majority difficult to construct, and built from vast, opaque supply this situation? of the weight of this house was sourced within 5 miles, with chains of materials and labour. Though well-intentioned, the roof likely coming from Cornwall, and the timber from the consequences of this mode of practice is a design Designing in contexts where water and power are not a Scotland or Canada. The masonry is exquisite; the house’s culture disconnected from the social, economic, political, given is incredibly liberating, and teaches us everything original structure is in excellent shape; and generations of and ecological realities its decision-making engages. we’ve seemingly forgotten. In our first project in Butaro, occupants have performed minor modifications over the Take, for example, something as ubiquitously “stainable” Rwanda, we were asked to design a hospital ward in an years to transition the house from coal to generations of as an aluminium extrusion for a double-glazed window area where power was unreliable. Without power HVAC gas boilers. This house will easily outlast us, and our son. system. That material would likely be sourced in a bauxite systems are ineffective and as a result, we went back to Compare that to the new house being built around the mine in West Africa; smelted in Iceland; processed and first principals to create passive ventilation in the wards corner—built to last 60 years, of a layer cake of walling iced extruded in southeast Asia; shipped to Dubai (or Mumbai) that achieve the air changes required to avoid patient- with 1-wyth brick veneer, of PVC glazing, of roll-roofing … then onto Dar es Salaam; and finally transported by truck to to-patient infection transmission. Orientation, operable Rwanda. Through whose hands did it pass? Who profited openings, solar controls, natural light, and designing for a house meant to look like ours but built within a system (or not) along the way? Was all labour fair and legal? What air pressure and buoyancy created by the thermodynamics of planned obsolescence. ecological impacts did the extraction, smelting, extruding, of a room’s inhabitants, resulted in a ward without forced- At the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA) and transportation have? And this is one of hundreds of air mechanical systems. we’re using stone footings … we asked our engineers, materials that currently comprise a large building. From a water perspective it’s a similar approach: capturing “What did we design foundations out of before reinforced To help this conceptual shift we’re working with language all rainwater to supply grey water, fire, and irrigation concrete?” Out of everything we’re doing in that project to from the Slow Food movement and modifying it to suit limits the demand for trucked or piped potable water. In reduce the carbon footprint stone foundations have had, construction: Good, Clean and Fair. Every decision must such a hilly context we sited the water uphill and relied by far, the most dramatic impact. Roca Sanitario, S.A. Avda. Diagonal, 513 08029 Barcelona - Spain Telephone +34 93 366 1200 www.roca.com 0202 anolecraB .A.S ,oiratinaS acoR ©