Episode 131: Sierra Bainbridge

As a founder and Senior Principal at Model of Architecture Serving Society, known as MASS, Sierra Bainbridge directs the Landscape Studio and Abundant Futures Lab. She leads many of MASS’s most complex and transformative projects across landscape, memorial, architectural, and land-use design.

With a background blending landscape, architecture, ecology, and regional planning, she is committed to comprehensive, cross-disciplinary approaches, applying design techniques and landscape metrics that demonstrate humanity’s capacity to respond boldly to climate change and to create a more abundant future for all species.

She’s also an author of the firm’s 2026 book, Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology, and a Flourishing Planet (Axio Editions). It’s an exploration (complete with recipes) of a few transformational projects that Sierra calls “inflection points” for the organization.

“We wanted people to see how this works,” she says. “These projects have tangible impacts. They are proof of concept. And while each is particular to its place, they have broad application, too.”