Matthijs Bouw "The Aesthetics of Resilience"

Matthijs Bouw studied architecture at the TU Delft. During his studies, he designed his first building, the Soest Day Care Center, with four friends. This building was described by critic Bart Lootsma as ‘one of the five most important Dutch buildings of the decade.’ During his time at the university, he also became an editor for ‘De Architect’ magazine and started teaching architecture theory at the Tilburg Academy.

Immediately after finishing his studies in 1995, he founded One Architecture. One Architecture designs buildings, infrastructures and urban environments. One also uses design to help cities, regions and countries with their long term spatial and infrastructure planning.

The firm is known for its unique approach in which programmatic, financial, technical and organizational issues are addressed, communicated and often 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. The collaborative nature of the practice is also visible in One Architecture’s projects with O.M.A., such as the project for Les Halles in Paris.

Currently, Bouw works on such diverse projects as the transformation of Amsterdam’s oldest building, the Oude Kerk (Old Church), into an art space, the Dutch government policy on Smart Cities, and the long-term development of Delhi (Delhi 2050). He is also, with BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), co-lead for The Big U, the winning proposal for Manhattan’s flood protection in Rebuild by Design.

Matthijs Bouw co-curated (with Kristin Feireiss) the 2000 Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale and has published articles and reviews in many architectural publications, such as Wiederhall, de Architect, Archis/Volume, Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, Bauwelt and MONU. In 2006, the Korean DD series published a monograph of One Architecture's work. In addition to his practice and publications, Matthijs Bouw teaches and lectures internationally. He was 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.

In 2014, Matthew Stadler’s book on Bouw’s work, Deventer, was published byNAi Publishers.