Thatcher Bean

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 their 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 their 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.