Seeking Abundance

Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology, and a Flourishing Planet offers a hopeful and actionable vision for the future of architecture, one where abundance is viewed as a means to restore and balance, not just build.

Regenerative design is a way of building that heals our planet and our communities by halting biodiversity loss, reversing climate change, and improving social equity. Over the last decade, the nonprofit design practice MASS has proven that we can yield positive social, environmental, and economic results through a series of projects in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Seeking Abundance RICA Exteriors — ORO Editions

Seeking Abundance argues for reducing the harm our building activities wage in our environments and that we can—and must—help people and the planet thrive together. The proof? MASS’s projects represent a coherent and replicable philosophy that responds to local ecologies and transforms lives.

This groundbreaking new book, co-edited by Sierra Bainbridge and Alan Ricks, examines how the power of multidisciplinary collaboration, regenerative practices, and community engagement can actively contribute to a healthier, more harmonious world. The evidence of these works can be found in three case studies, focusing on The Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and The Ilima Primary School.

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“Seeking Abundance offers a hopeful and actionable vision for the future of architecture, one where design, engineering and construction are viewed as a means to restore and balance, not just build. The work revealed choices about materials, construction methods, and labor that most books neglect, taking readers into the ethics of design’s production. Design is not just about creating beautiful structures; it’s about understanding and responding to the context in which those structures exist.

Alan Ricks, Co-Executive Director & Founding Principal

Seeking Abundance Fossey feature — ORO Editions

“Our buildings, landscape design and material selection is a response to the interconnectedness of the world around us. We believe architecture can be a tool for healing and nurturing both people and planet. Seeking Abundance strives for a new definition of abundance rooted in equilibrium, when all species, including our own, thrive in relation to each other.”

Sierra Bainbridge, Senior Principal, Landscape Architecture

Seeking Abundance Material Sourcing — ORO Editions

Seeking Abundance, Strong Women section — ORO Editions

Seeking Abundance Graphics — ORO Editions

Alan Ricks | Flourishing Together: How Design Can Help People and the Planet Thrive

Drawing on 15 years of nonprofit practice, Alan Ricks, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of MASS, reflects on how architecture can move beyond scarcity thinking toward abundance, creating places that foster well-being, belonging, dignity, beauty, and joy. He outlines MASS’s model of research, catalyst projects, and knowledge-sharing, and highlights how design can intervene where markets and politics often fall short.

Sierra Bainbridge | Planting Systems of Hope: Regenerative Design for an Abundant World

Sierra Bainbridge, Founder and Senior Principal at MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society), invites us to rethink design through the lens of regeneration, interdependence, and radical hope. Beginning with the metaphor of a single seed, Sierra traces how small, well-placed interventions can set entire systems in motion, ecological, social, and human.

In a Tenth of the Time

A film about the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, where design, science, and local stewardship transformed degraded land into a thriving ecosystem.

Conversations on Seeking Abundance

Inspired by the structure of the book itself, each of our gatherings around the book have been conceived as an additive experience—bringing together immersive film, music, sound elements from previous book events while responding to the particular character of each place.

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