Office for the Next Environment Architecture D.P.C. (OFTN) is a New York State-certified SDVOB design corporation that specializes in climate-adaptive urban planning and architecture. OFTN plays a key role facilitating design synthesis and technical integration on multi-disciplinary teams developing large-scale resiliency and infrastructure projects, providing context-sensitive urban design, innovative GIS data analytics, and visualizations of complex systems for stakeholder and inter-governmental engagement.

A consistent theme through these varied design and planning projects is the firm’s thorough interrogation of the spatial implications of technical and policy-based proposals, whether the potential changes to the urban fabric come from implementing large-scale infrastructure (e.g., flood protection), systemic transformations (e.g., transit modalities), or regulatory evolutions (e.g., zoning). With this uniquely flexible skill-set, our designers have helped drive the urban design of numerous high-profile projects, including New York City’s nearly completed East Side Coastal Resiliency effort and the ongoing Financial District and Seaport Masterplan. OFTN additionally has had the honor to be the Architect of Record for the City’s first two major resiliency projects to be implemented, ESCR and BMCR, as well as for Lower Manhattan’s new Interceptor Gate Buildings, the first such structures to be built in New York.

The complexity of the challenge we face today — embedding climate change mitigation practices in cities while planning to adapt — requires integrated approaches to problem solving and collaborative tools. Design is a key tool to synthesize and communicate both these challenges and the opportunities to improve our cities. We approach stakeholder engagement, detailed scenario-driven analysis, concept design, and implementation pathways as mutually informative components of a singular project narrative. As an expert on resilient open space and infrastructure on large teams, OFTN brings acute attention to design integration and thoughtful mediation between agencies and constituencies.