Announcing an exciting partnership with MASS Design Group
It’s with great anticipation and excitement that we announce our partnership with award-winning nonprofit architectural firm MASS Design Group to convene multi-tribal outreach and engagement to inform the design and programming of the future Willamette Falls public riverwalk.
An important moment for the public riverwalk
As you know, together with local government, Native communities, and private businesses, we have been organizing and raising funds since 2016 to create a public space that celebrates the rich human and natural history of Willamette Falls. MASS is working with the Trust to help connect the members of an expanded design team with prioritized use, activity, and content recommendations stemming from an ongoing engagement process initiated during the summer of 2019. MASS Design’s partnership comes at a crucial moment in the public riverwalk design planning process.
A little about MASS Design Group
MASS Design Group is an architecture and design collective with offices in Boston, MA; Santa Fe, NM, Poughkeepsie, NY; and Kigali, Rwanda. Centered on a mission is to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity, MASS supports partners to advance their impact through the built environment, including architectural design, master planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and strategic planning, as well as research, evaluation, education, and policy development.
MASS Design Group intertwines beautiful architecture with equity, justice, and expertise working with Native communities and water-based landscapes across the country, making them an ideal partner for the public riverwalk. Their processes are informed by deep engagement with communities, cultures, and history. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has required us to physically distance ourselves from one another, this challenging time is bringing into focus how important it is to bring people together. We are taking this bold step with MASS, local government, and Tribal communities because we recognize this rare and unique opportunity to create healing for people and the environment.
Centering Indigenous voices
Providing exemplary culturally-responsive experiences at Willamette Falls means ensuring that the stories told there reflect the full range of the Falls’ human and natural history. While multiple area organizations keep and convey the Falls’ pioneer and industrial stories, the voices of Indigenous people are notably muted. Formed to serve as an intermediary among the numerous public and private entities with an interest in the public riverwalk project, the Trust has emerged as the natural leader of an effort to center Indigenous voices from many Tribal communities, in the planning processes of design, interpretation, programming and conservation for the public riverwalk and beyond.
Engagement that seeks healing
MASS’s engagement work will ensure that the public riverwalk centers Indigenous experiences and educates the greater Portland community on the Native stories of the region. Not only will the public riverwalk be a special public space, it will also allow visitors to access the complex and difficult histories of Oregon City through curated storytelling and programming.
“We build our work on the fundamental belief that architecture is never neutral — it either hurts or heals,” said Joseph Kunkel, Design Director of the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab at MASS. “The opportunity that exists at the Falls to engage collaboratively with multiple tribes is an unprecedented healing gesture. We look forward to working with the Trust to make this ambitious vision for a sacred and restorative cultural and recreational space a reality.”
As part of the public riverwalk development process, the Trust and MASS are seeking input and advice from the five confederated Tribes, as well as the Portland metro region’s urban Native American population. The five Tribes are the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and Confederated Tribes and Bands of The Yakama Nation.
We celebrate this important moment in our journey towards realizing our collective vision for the public riverwalk and we look forward to sharing more about our partnership with MASS in the weeks and months to come.
