Why ODA is in the Design 100

ODA was founded in New York in 2007 by Eran Chen, and in less than two decades has become one of the city’s most prolific architecture practices, with more than fifty completed buildings to its name. The firm’s work concentrates on a genuine problem: how residential towers can hold density without draining the life out of the buildings, and the neighbourhoods, around them.

That thinking is visible along the Brooklyn waterfront, where towers such as 420 Kent and The Brooklyn Grove treat light, air and shared outdoor space as design problems to solve rather than amenities added afterwards. Eran Chen, who also teaches at Columbia and NYU, has argued that density does not have to be the enemy of a good building, and ODA’s expanding body of work, now reaching beyond New York into cities from Miami to Rotterdam, is that argument made in steel and glass.