Climate Week was a Success!

NYC Climate Week 2025 was possibly the most exciting one yet for One Architecture & Urbanism (ONE) —not least because many events centered on our first built project in the city, East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR). Between the events we were hosting or participating in and the ones organized by our collaborators and other experts in the field, we needed a moment to process a week full of insight and inspiration. Whether you made it to one of our events or in case you missed it, here's a comprehensive recap of ONE's Climate Week.

It was only fitting that we started and ended the week at the newly reopened sections of East River Park, which officially opened to the public over Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. While the unseasonably warm weather was a subtle hint of climate change, it certainly made for pleasant tours of the park throughout the week, from our designer-led walkthrough on Tuesday morning to closing out with a summery vibe at a well-attended Community Day on Sunday. Our ESCR collaborators Jeremy Alain Siegel, AIA, AICP ( BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group ) and Molly Bourne ( MNLA ) joined ONE’s Matthijs Bouw for those two events and the tour of Stuyvesant Cove Park following a panel discussion at SolarOne on Wednesday, moderated by Michael Kimmelman ( The New York Times ) and featuring Damaris Reyes ( Good Old Lower East Side, Inc. (GOLES) ), Amy Chester ( Rebuild by Design ), Becky Yurek ( NYC Department of Design and Construction ), and Daniel A. Zarrilli, P.E. ( Columbia University ).

We mixed things up on Thursday and Friday with a standing-room-only panel on Resilience Hubs, a Young Professionals Happy Hour at our studio, and a wide-ranging conversation about New York City’s waterfront at Pier 57. The former event built on our fruitful ongoing collaboration with Joyce E. Coffee, LEED AP and Robert Macnee, Ph.D. of Climate Resilience Consulting , joined by ONE’s Justine Shapiro-Kline , Amy from RbD, and local leaders Gweny Love ( Mantua Worldwide Community, Inc. ) and Ceara O'Leary ( Detroit Collaborative Design Center ) for a rich conversation on Resilience Hubs.

Our happy hour event featured ONE’s Laura Frances , Youngjin Song and Hassan Saleem with our esteemed collaborators Ellen Roussel ( Jacobs ), Ethan Petersen ( eDesign Dynamics ), Madha Nawal ( Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners ), and Isabelle Thomas ( NYC Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice ) sharing their thoughts on our Climate Strong Communities project with a rapt audience of young and emerging designers and practitioners.

And for our last talk of the week, organized by the Village Trip, Matthijs took the stage with Moody Harney (Mothershuckers), Noreen Doyle (Hudson River Park Trust), and Michael Kimmelman, sharing insights into the city’s relationship to the waterways that surround it.

As diverse as the events and audiences were, we picked up on a few common themes and takeaways throughout the week:

1. Community is key: Reflecting on the at-times contentious planning process of the Big U and ESCR in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Damaris Reyes and Amy Chester made it clear that it was a matter of leading by listening. The same applies to Resilience Hubs, which—as Gweny Love and Ceara O’Leary noted—must be co-designed with the communities they serve.
2. Insurance is interested: Even as completed sections of ESCR and its counterpart in Battery Park City will provide protection from storm surge in coming years, it will still be many years before the 11-mile Big U is substantially complete, and longer still before Army Corps plans come to fruition. In the meantime, the insurance industry is paying close attention to these efforts and considering new models such as parametric insurance. (Prompted by an audience question from an insurer, Joyce suggested a more out-of-the-box idea: perhaps they could fund resilience hubs as a potential naming opportunity.)
3. Finding funding: With federal funding evaporating as of this year, resilience practitioners in the public sector are increasingly seeking alternative sources of funding to advance efforts and projects. As Ellen noted, Climate Strong Communities has found some success in smaller, state-level grant opportunities even as the funding landscape continues to shift.

Thanks to everyone who joined us during Climate Week! We were happy to connect with friends and collaborators old and new, and we look forward to continuing the momentum in coming months!