The ONE Resilient Team [led by One Architecture & Urbanism with Smartland, Arcadis, OverMorgen, Drift, Climate Adaptation Partners, and various centers at the University of Pennsylvania] was selected as one of two teams to participate in the Resilience by Design: Amsterdam Metropolitan Region (RBD MRA) program. With a focus on the MRA’s urbanized parts, the ONE team collaborated with government organizations, knowledge institutes, and local stakeholders in the region to provide creative and integrated solutions to climate-adaptive development.

Over the past few months, the team advanced with its analysis of climate impacts, stressors, and thresholds to identify areas of opportunity for planning and design to embed climate adaptation in urban space. For the selected sites as a result of the study—Beverwijk, Haarlem, Haven-Stad, and Almere —the team developed strategies and demonstration projects to solidify climate adaptation as a ‘normal’ part of integrated investment decisions now and in the future within the MRA. The final RBD proposals were presented to the many stakeholders and at the Deltaconference in November 2020, and already serve as climate-adaptive inputs for the implementation program and investment agenda of the MRA’s ‘Urbanization Strategy’ for 2050 and beyond.

The final report presented by ONE Resilient Team is available here.

• Project Period: March 2020 — November 2020
• Client: Gemeente Haarlem
• Collaborators: Smartland, Arcadis, OverMorgen, Drift EUR, Climate Adaptation Partners, University of Pennsylvania

One Architecture is the urban planner and supervisor for Gouda Oost. In the past years, Gouda-Oost had become an (undeserved) symbol of the difficulties in new towns. When ONE started, in 2008, residents, municipality and housing corporations had already been cooperating for some time to transform and upgrade this neighborhood in Gouda without much success. In an essay, One Architecture suggested an adaptive ‘open’ plan that will be filled in piece by piece, by involving local authorities, stakeholders and especially local residents. With the urban plans for 3 different parts, One Architecture has now elaborated the first parts of the renewal.

The urban plan comprises a new, green, public area, the ‘Oversteek’ (traverse). The new and existing neighborhood facilities, like shops, supermarkets, a community school, the existing church and the mosque, are all situated along this area. The construction of the Oversteek is linked with the realization of an ambitious and diverse housing program, which will accommodate both existing and new residents, as well as special target groups. By dividing the housing groups into small plot the architecture will aid to showcase the newfound diversity.

The landscape is an important bearer of the developments in the neighborhood. Therefore, there has been an intensive collaboration with Lodewijk Baljon Landscape Architects. Central to this is the consolidation of the existing structure of green-bordered waterways.

• Project Period: 2008 — ongoing
• Client: District of Gouda Oost, The Netherlands
• Collaborators: Lodewijk Baljon Landscape Architects, Woonpartners

ONE was commissioned by NYC Parks and the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency as part of a multidisciplinary team to develop a resilience vision for the East Harlem neighborhood, extending from East 92nd to 154th Street. The result of this year-long study is a comprehensive plan for adaptation to climate change impacts through an integrated approach that includes coastal protection measures, stormwater management, and urban heat island strategies within a larger framework for open space and increased social resiliency.  

The project also sought to use its process to grow a culture of resiliency in East Harlem. Through an innovative stakeholder outreach, the team partnered with DREAM Charter School to co-develop a high school curriculum in resiliency planning as well as link to a network of community institutions and residents. The resiliency planning curriculum exposes students to principles and methodologies related to neighborhood mapping, analyzing social vulnerability, and designing green infrastructure. This effort resulted in the publication of a 20-lesson curriculum made available for other schools to teach, and demonstration projects by the students across the neighborhood. 

The public report is available here.  

• Project Period: October 2017 — October 2018 
• Client: Organizing agency: NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC DPR)
  Partner agency: NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR) 
• Collaborators: Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects, Langan, NYU Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK), Urbanomics, Sam Schwartz Engineering 

As part of the Fourth Regional Plan, One Architecture & Urbanism and Only If were commissioned by the Regional Plan Association (RPA) to develop a proposal for repurposing an underutilized freight line as a commuter transit system linking together the outer reaches of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

Re-conceptualizing existing right-of-way and adjacent spaces, the new “Triboro Corridor” would create a 24 mile long linear park and greenway, anchored by a new passenger rail line and a bike “superhighway,” stitching together underserved regions of the outer boroughs. The multi-layered schematic includes an integrated stormwater management system, fed by the adjacent street networks. Combining large catalytic projects with smaller organic development, The Triboro Line generates capacity across the outer boroughs for the growth of regional affordable housing while keeping value creation local.

Acknowledging the complex dynamics of city-making, the Triboro Corridor moves beyond traditional transit-oriented development (TOD) modes that focus predominantly on densification of areas immediately surrounding stations. In this sense, the plan focuses not only on the station nodes, but also the in-between spaces, where community life is created and fostered.

The Triboro Corridor calls for an innovative use of existing public resources by an entrepreneurial local government while incentivizing private actors. The proposal underscores that development processes must be simultaneously shaped by large concrete projects and smaller organic growth. The proposed plan provides a “kit of parts” for inclusive growth maximizing social benefit, promoting civic empowerment, and optimizing economic revenue. Site-specific design proposals not only encompass physical interventions, but also outline regulatory measures and community development tools, resulting in a strategy that can be implemented incrementally. The approach is not a masterplan, but plays out through the development of three guiding strategies: a low-carbon corridor, processes for the coming clean economy, and catalysts for near-term implementation.

Designs created for the Triboro through this year-long, collaborative process were integrated into the RPA’s Fourth Regional Plan, a 2018 exhibition at the Center for Architecture (AIA-NY), and have been awarded for design excellence by AIA-NY, ASLA-NY, and The Architect’s Newspaper (AN).

• Project Period: March 2017 – November 2017
• Client: Regional Plan Association (RPA)
• Collaborators: Only If, Regional Plan Association

The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project was a follow on study to the BIG U proposal (for 2014’s Rebuild By Design competition); the second major project area to move forward after ESCR was initiated.

For NYC’s Economic Development Corporation, One Architecture completed feasibility, planning, and concept design studies to understand the best strategies for implementing flood protection and park improvements along the coastal periphery of Lower Manhattan. Representing an incredibly diverse physical, social, and political cross section of the city, this project posed many challenges and opportunities in synthesizing broader urban agendas in the implementation of flood protection. ONE leveraged our expertise from previous and concurrent resilient infrastructure projects to test the feasibility of different implementation strategies in terms of spatial, structural, and regulatory considerations.

The LMCR core study articulated a series of flood protection compartments which the City has since taken up as discrete projects, including Battery Park City Resiliency and the Brooklyn Bridge Montgomery Resiliency (BMCR) projects.

Lower Manhattan Long Term Plan, a sub-project within LMCR, dealt with the long-term fate of Lower Manhattan, addressing larger topics outside the coastal infrastructure realm such as the possibility for increased civic placemaking, rethinking transportation systems, unlocking funding, and incremental adaptation to an ever-evolving environmental context. This work was presented in the Lower Manhattan Climate Resiliency Plan, and set the stage for ONE’s current role on The Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan.

• Project Period: June 2016 – June 2018
• Client: NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYC-EDC)
• Collaborators: AECOM, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), HR&A Advisors, James Lima P+D, Hester Street Collaborative

Within Randstad 2040, the Structure Vision on the development of the Randstad that passed the Dutch cabinet in 2008, Matthijs Bouw initially led the theme ‘networks’, in which ONE produced a number of alternative scenarios for infrastructure (and tied them to the spatial choices that each demanded). The purpose of the models was to be able to talk about the functionality of the Randstad and the positioning of program and infrastructure. Clear definitions of the models and simple names were chosen deliberately, in order to be able to reach a wide public.

Subsequently, Matthijs Bouw was studio-master of the ‘integration’ studio, where the findings of the two other themes (housing and landscape) where integrated in order to provide a clear set of choices for the involved ministries.

The whole process was followed by an exploration of the so-called Randstad Key Projects following from the Structure Vision. The exploration of these projects (done with O.M.A.) has resulted in the publication “Differentiëren, Calibreren en Integreren Ontwerpende verkenning naar sleutelprojecten in het kader van de Structuurvisie Randstad 2040”. ONE’s research showed that a central issue in the definition of the key projects was the redefinition of the central government, which had been watered down by two decades of decentralization and liberalization. It is better to differentiate between types of projects and, in the interest of regional area developments, to stimulate the relationship between the central government and regional government based on the market principle of quid pro quo. The report followed this advice up with the actual definition of key projects.

For the Dutch government-led Water as Leverage challenge, ONE assembled an interdisciplinary, international team of designers, engineers, economists, ecologists, anthropologists, art activists, and academics to tackle water-related risks and opportunities in Semarang, Indonesia. 

The ONE team developed a city-wide, integrated vision spanning from the region’s coast to its hilly urban periphery. The proposal puts forth potential interventions with multiple benefits centered around eco-industrial clusters, water security, resilience communities, and a protective coastal greenbelt. Only as part of a comprehensive approach, the team described, would any individual infrastructure project achieve a net positive effect on the drastic rates of subsidence (largely due to groundwater extraction and aquifer depletion), sea-level rise, and rapid urbanization presently occurring in Semarang. 

The design approach is comprised around three connected resilient systems: 1) an optimized water capture and recycling system; (2) an integrated (eco, industrial, logistic) protective coastal zone; and (3) a network of resilient kampungs (districts). Many of the component sub-projects within these systems – street-level green infrastructure, water conveyance and retention systems along toll roads, protective greenbelts built into waterfront industrial sites, offshore barriers around inundated port areas – tie into the city’s planned or ongoing capital projects in the coming years. As part of the challenge, the team co-developed these potential projects and concepts alongside city agencies, local stakeholders, businesses, and communities. 

Since the delivery of the final program proposals in mid-2019, ONE and Kota Kita have continued working between RVO and the Indonesian government entities on capacity building, integration and adoption of concepts, and (ultimately) a series of targeted infrastructure investments. 

The Final Report is available here.   

• Project Period: April 2018 – June 2019 
• Client: Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) 
• Collaborators: Kota Kita, Deltares, Wetlands International, Sherwood Design Engineers, Hysteria Grobak, University of Pennsylvania, Iqbal Reza Fazlurrahman, Cindy Riswantyo, Nature Conservancy (TNC), Atelier Ten, Diponegoro University 

In 2017, ONE was commissioned by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) alongside LEVEL Agency for Infrastructure to review the initial master plan for New Clark City, the Philippines, as well as developing a new river study and resilience framework with guidelines. 

This proposed green city, to be situated about 100 kilometers north of Manila in the Philippines, would be home to government centers, an agro-industrial park, a major sports complex, and more. ONE played a pivotal role in integrating resilience strategies linking water management and green space to all open systems circulating throughout the speculative metropolis, creating a comprehensive flood protection strategy for the entire city closely linked into efforts strengthening social resilience. 

As a deliverable of the review, ONE and Level developed a series of recommendations guiding further study of the river zone (resulting in the River Study with River Zone Plan) and mapped implementation pathways using a resilience framework, resulting in a sector-based Resilience Framework with Guidelines. The intent of the River Study with River Zone Plan was to leverage the identity-building and untapped assets of natural rivers in New Clark City. ONE and Level developed the River Study which analyzes challenges in planning and implementation resilience, and proposes design opportunities to optimize the river zone as a productive and protective ecosystem that provides immediate benefits for the city while integrating long-term climate adaptation strategies as well. It also identifies opportunities to link the river zone, designed with a baseline of mitigating 100-year storm events, to other green zones and connectors throughout the city, utilizing a mix of hard and soft infrastructure to align with land use and potential programming. 

All of these studies were intended to embed principles of resilience into the city’s development narrative, which profiles itself as a smart, green, disaster-resilient city, articulating core values related to resilience alongside high-level guidelines for achieving them, emphasizing nature-based solutions, and integrating physical and social interventions. 

Read more about the New Clark City Resilience Framework here. 

• Project Period: September 2017 — January 2018 
• Client: Asian Development Bank (ADB), Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) 
• Collaborators: LEVEL Agency for Infrastructure, Arcadis  

Concord is susceptible to the impacts of climate change, namely increases in heat, rainfall, and storms, and damage caused by riverine and stormwater flooding. While the Town of Concord has excelled at taking action to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases that cause climate change, the Town still has more to do to prepare for localized changes that are already underway. Concord’s town centers can be made more resilient to the current and upcoming impacts of climate change through planning efforts which will allow businesses and residents to continue enjoying their town amidst changing conditions and challenges. The plan for Sustainable Concord aims to provide an actionable roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preserving our natural resources, and preparing all residents for the impacts of climate change. ONE worked to develop resilience design recommendations for the Main Street Milldam area and the business center in West Concord. 

To develop a long-term strategy for a resilient and vibrant village, the team performed an extensive vulnerability analysis, by reviewing past work, analyzing data on climate impacts, identifying vulnerabilities, and engaging with local businesses, schools, and residents. The team has developed preliminary recommendations for Concord’s town centers via urban design, architecture, and policy solutions. 

The plan is available here.

• Project Period: October 2019 – June 2020
• Client: Town of Concord
• Collaborators: Kim Lundgren Associates (KLA), Center for Sustainable Energy

The Moakley Park Vision Plan balances outdoor recreational needs and community gathering spaces for a major park in South Boston, with protection against climate-change impacts such as flooding from increased rainfall and sea-level rise. The plan provides a vision for the programmatic development of the park that ensures a diverse and balanced mix of uses, increases active recreational opportunities, cultural amenities, and safety. At the same time, it will consider how the design of the park can help increase the neighborhood’s resilience against coastal flooding and reduce the impact of rainfall on recreational fields.  

The planning process itself seeks to stimulate meaningful and inclusive community engagement and identify both a long-term design approach to the park that encourages a wide range of users as well as early ‘catalyst’ projects and partnerships to help promote and sustain future park renovation projects. The vision will seek to increase connectivity between Moakley Park and adjacent neighborhoods as well as Carson Beach and The Boston Harbor Islands, just steps away. The Vision Plan process spanned the course of a single year. Four major community events were planned during this time. For these events, ONE and Stoss designed immersive public engagement centered around play activities simulating flood protection and interactive exercises to help determine the park’s future programming. In addition, the team conducted a routine series of open houses, interviews, and stakeholder meetings. In the initial stages of the project, a Community Advisory Board was formed to inform the design team of questions, concerns, and aspirations for future users of Moakley. In Fall 2018, ONE and Stoss were invited to the Ontario Climate Consortium to present on their innovative techniques through an imitation engagement session, Lateral Dialogues.  

Presently, the team is working on the schematic design of the full park, as well as developing the “Phase 1”  project which will commence construction in late 2021. 

• Project Period: January 2018 — January 2019 
• Client: Boston Department of Parks and Recreation 
• Collaborators: Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Nitsch Engineering, Weston & Sampson 

ONE designed the urban plan and infrastructure for the Deventer Rivierenwijk. In 2008, housing corporation Rentree’s ambitious plans for the transformation of the Deventer Rivierenwijk, a so-called Vogelaarwijk, came to a slow stop. 300 houses were already demolished in the process, leaving a neighborhood torn to pieces. After this, One Architecture was asked to design an ‘essay’ on the future of the neighborhood. The essays main analysis focused on the arduous method of planning used in the past, in which every aspect and element was entangled with all other aspects and elements. ONE proposed an alternative way of planning and was commissioned to lead a new start.

ONE’s Urban Framework describes spatial starting points, conditions and directives. It indicates how the actors’ various spatial interventions, e.g. the reconstruction of the Amstellaan, 500 new houses, local facilities, neighborhood connections, and landscape structure, will combine into a coherent result. All obstacles obstructing the restart have been solved with the designs of the plan’s components. An important feature in the design and how the neighborhood will function in the future was integrating and widening the Amstellaan, a main traffic artery. For this, One Architecture created a new design. With the design within budget and having the full support of the area’s residents, the reconstruction of the neighborhood and its infrastructure was re-started in 2013.

Further optimizations of the plan’s components are the result of this integral planning process. Investments in the integration of the Amstellaan also helped with the construction of Children’s Center. Project Amstellaan has resulted in a “tree bank”, making full-grown trees available cheaply for new construction. The green buffer space enables flexibility and room for optimization of Rentree’s housing program. The various components can be elaborated within this Framework in a time and pace fit to the specific project. This also allows for the insertion of new insights in the project.

• Project Period: 2011 — 2014 (constructed; urban redevelopment ongoing)
• Client: Municipality of Deventer, the Netherlands
• Collaborators: Royal HaskoningDHV

VROM (The ministry of spatial planning) has commissioned One Architecture, in combination with Zwarts & Jansma Architecten, to design the Olympic Main Infrastructure for the Netherlands for the Games in 2028. The OHS approaches the spatial assignment related to ambitions in the field of sports, economy, sustainability, welfare and society.

The core of the advice is that the Netherlands are basically too small to organize the Olympics. It is spatially small. It is organizationally fragmented. It is mentally small. How to plan big in a small country?

There are two ways to handle this. The first is to force the compelling scale of the Olympics, and the second is developing flexibility and cleverness based on this smallness. The tension between these two dimensions was detected continuously while working on the OHS. The question is whether the focus should be on the Olympic Games or on the Olympic Plan. Between a focus on the candidate cities Amsterdam and Rotterdam or on their environs. Between planning policy starting with the OHS or with the OHS following spatial policy. Between the IOC guidelines and pro-actively working to change these, in a form of ‘agency’. Between concentration and distribution of functions (it might be argued, following Frieling, that this tension is the basic tension in Dutch planning of the last 6 decades).

The Olympic Plan, so the analysis goes, is a good way to deal with this tension, but fails from a planning perspective. The time-dimension of planning is much larger than the time-dimension of building support. In planning, we don’t have time to lose. The result of One Architecture’s work is the invention of a mechanism to deal with this tension in the field of spatial development. A method of planning is being proposed in which, starting from a wide scope plans are increasingly focused: rather a road map than a design. This results in a way of planning in which public discussions, innovations, change and unforeseen developments can find their place, not by changing the plan but by defining moments of choice and decisions in order to focus the plan more and more. Those moments also create the politically very important ‘exit’.

• Project Period: 2008 — 2009
• Client: Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) of the Netherlands
• Collaborators: Zwarts & Jansma Architecten

One Architecture operates on a variety of scales, places and design fields. While working in these different realities and contexts, ONE recognizes the growing importance of digital technology and Smart Cities for today’s design questions. Often working as an integrator between different disciplines and agenda’s, One Architecture is more and more often using technology and technological tools. In the years ONE started to make technology and Smart City thinking part of both traditional projects and some special (research) projects. These projects evolve around four themes, each addressed with different, context-related, partners:

Smart Governance with The Mobile City. The rise of ‘big’ and ‘open’ data allows for new actors and new ways to get insight into urban infrastructures, salient urban issues as well as in opportunities for urban development. Next to that the rise of (social) media platforms provide citizens and institutions with new tools to organize publics around collective issues, mobilize people, and manage social infrastructural resources in collaborative ways. One Architecture works more and more as ‘arrangeur’ in citymaking processes.

Smart Fabrication with Waag Society and Filson and Rorhbacher. New relationships between designers and fabrication are made possible through digital fabrication. Digital technology and Building Information Modeling have changed the way our teams work and how our architecture is simulated. Using ‘direct prototyping’ and computer-aided manufacturing (CNC or robotics), One Architecture, with its partners, is constructing a number of projects.

In the Netherlands, ONE co-curates the Buiksloterham Living Lab, a 600 acre brownfield redevelopment in Amsterdam-Noord based on the principles of the circular economy — therein also acting as investors for a small housing area.ONE initiated both the research and the housing project and is a core member of the circular Buiksloterham team.

Currently, ONE’s New York office is expanding on its expertise by working on “Smart City” digital infrastructures and data-analysis.

The Hackable City is a research project that explores the potential for new modes of collaborative city-making, in a network society. The team’s primary case study is Buiksloterham, a brownfield regeneration project in Amsterdam North. Our approach is hands-on. We actively take part in activities in and around the neighborhood. Hackable citymaking revolves around the organization of individuals into collectives or publics, often through or with the aid of a digital media platform. Individuals contribute resources, such as knowledge, time, information or money, and at the same time reap some form of a benefit, be it social, economic or political, on an individual or communal level.

The first contours for this project were laid out by One Architecture and The Mobile City during the Metropool NL workshop organized by the Deltametropool Society in 2012, resulting in the publication Eindhoven, Hackable World City. This was followed by an ‘embedded researcher’ project executed by Cristina Ampatzidou, hosted at the University of Amsterdam and One Architecture and funded by the Creative Industries Research Centre Amsterdam, with contributions from Utrecht University.

In 2013 funding was received from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for a KIEM-exploration (lead by Michiel de Lange at Utrecht University). And in 2014 NWO funded this as a Creative Industries research project hosted at the University of Amsterdam, The Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), and One Architecture. For the latter, new partners joined the research coalition: The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Pakhuis de Zwijger, and Stadslab Buiksloterham. Today, Hackable City has created an online open platform that acts a record of the team’s thoughts and ideas, available to be shared with the neighborhood.

In the current hospital financing system, a successful re-development of this former hospital area translates directly into the cost of treatment.

The loose architectural organization of the existing complex allows, when repeated, for a similar freedom in the architecture of the new buildings. In the Beeldkwaliteitplan, the relationship between such aspects as volume, massing, materiality, style and size is formulated in order to establish the limits of possible differentiation while allowing maximum freedom. In its studies ONE found out that the pre-war parts of the hospital complex, called the SMCD, organized around a courtyard with ‘arms’ stretching into the landscape, would be well-suited for new, economically strong, demographic groups, people fed up with the boredom of suburbia and with a desire to live in an urban yet green setting. The complex will be converted into a mix of apartments and townhouses, with services attached.

Repetition of the SMCD is subsequently used to create a concept that extends the identity and quality of the pre-war hospital buildings onto the whole 8 hectare site, while allowing development in distinct parts under a common urban-, marketing and management plan. With One Architecture as its prime-consultant and planner, leading the team of specialists, in lieu of a commercial project developer, development revenues were channeled from the developer back to the hospital by selling at a later stage than is usual.

In 1998, Matthijs Bouw and Donald van Dansik visited Siemens to discuss their ‘Airport in the Sea study’ and the potential that separating Terminal and Tarmac by means of the Transrapid hold for the Randstad. Out of these discussions, the plan was made to use Transrapid as a metro system for the West of Holland. ‘Rondje Randstad’ will contract the Netherlands in time, making it a metropolis, while allowing for extensive green spaces.

Since then, the idea has taken hold. One Architecture has worked for a number of private and public clients on such diverse aspects as studies for new centers, real-estate potential, traffic chain management, terminal layout, marketing concepts and, in 2002, the supervision of the national design for the Delta Metropolis. In this Design Studio Deltametropolis ONE developed the format of a design studio, assigned various design teams their briefs, engaged the different stakeholders, organized the external expertise and reported on the findings.

The beauty is that traffic circles can easily be adapted to function as a local network, simply by adjusting traffic directions.

The circular traffic structure, with its possibility one- and two-directional traffic, uses a little less road surface than the municipality’s proposal. While the circular traffic structure might be a little cheaper, it looks much more expensive and as such generates a feeling of luxury in the area, both for the single-family housing and for the social housing.

The prize winning competition entry, with Noël van Dooren, for ‘Living along the Dikes’ drastically reorganizes the Dutch river landscape.

The heavily Ruhr-polluted topsoil needs to be removed from the floodplains in order to increase flow-capacity. When moved outside the area, the law says it needs to be cleaned at high cost. This project proposes to deposit the polluted soil on site, on the higher sandy grounds within the floodplains.

Six under a Tennis Court investigates the possibilities of an urban planning that is not suppressed by geometry.

The houses have a tennis court on their roof. This colossal order, as it is called in classical architecture, of tennis courts makes it possible to place each dwelling individually, with every architecture possible. It makes this area of Leidsche Rijn simultaneously into a park, thereby redirecting notions of the public and the private.