Matthijs Bouw is a Dutch architect and founder of One Architecture (est 1995). an award-winning Amsterdam and New York-based design and planning firm. He currently serves as the Rockefeller Urban Resilience Fellow for Penn Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Bouw has been a guest professor at, a.o., TU Delft, Berlage Institute, TU Graz, University of Kentucky College of Design and Sci-Arc, and was professor i.V. of ‘Gebaeudelehre und Grundlagen des Entwerfens’ at the RWTH Aachen.
A leading voice on Resilient Design, he has published several dozen papers and given numerous talks to both students and professionals on incorporating resiliency into design practice. Bouw’s own practice is known for its unique approach in which programmatic, financial, technical and organizational issues are addressed, communicated and resolved through design. Bouw has been a pioneer in the use of design as a tool for collaboration, for instance through the development of ‘Design Studios’ as an instrument to support the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment with its long term planning, and in community-development projects.
In New York City, the office co-led the BIG Team that won the Rebuild by Design competition for the flood protection of Manhattan, and is currently part of the multi-disciplinary team executing the first phase of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project for Lower Manhattan. In the Netherlands, One are part of the ‘Hackable City’ team for Buiksloterham, a 600 acre brownfield redevelopment in Amsterdam-Noord based on the principles of the circular economy.
