The idea of the city is increasingly being measured not only by what it can produce, but by how it allows people to live. Across Amsterdam, Rome, Taipei, and other cities where OMA works, David Gianotten sees this shift as a changing way of working with the city. For the OMA managing partner and architect, questions of housing, mobility, public space, density, and community cannot be separated from the particular histories and conditions of each place.
That position places him somewhat at odds with the appeal of universal urban formulas. The fifteen-minute city, which has become one of the most influential planning ideas of recent years, proposes a simple ambition: organize neighborhoods so that everyday needs can be reached within a short walk or cycle, reducing dependence on cars while bringing living, working, leisure, and services closer together. But Gianotten is wary of treating the concept as a blueprint. ‘The core idea of the 15-minute city is that urban life is organized around neighborhoods where most daily needs can be reached within a short walk or cycle,’ he tells designboom in our exclusive interview. ‘While I see the 15-minute city as a valuable framework, I would be cautious about treating it as a universal planning model.’
For Gianotten, the important question is not whether every city should become a fifteen-minute city but what conditions allow a city to become more accessible in the first place. That means infrastructure, public transport, cycling, micromobility, housing, and local amenities but also the economic consequences that follow when these improvements arrive. ‘New transport connections and local amenities can reshape land values, with important implications for housing affordability, development and access,’ the architect notes.
This is where the apparently straightforward promise of the fifteen-minute city becomes more complicated. A neighborhood that offers excellent public transport, walkable streets, parks, schools, shops, and cultural facilities can become more desirable precisely because of those qualities. Without mechanisms that protect affordability and diversity, the more accessible city can also become a more expensive one. Rather than rejecting the model, Gianotten therefore reframes it as‘a guiding ambition to create places where daily life is more accessible, sustainable and connected.’
VMDA – Nutcrackers | image courtesy of Plomp
the city is not designed by following a universal formula
David Gianotten’s skepticism toward universal models comes from a practice that operates across very different urban contexts. Gianotten points to OMA’s research into the shopping mall for an exhibition at Powerhouse Parramatta, where the studio examines the relationship between the mall, the suburb, and the ideal city. Victor Gruen, often described as the father of the shopping mall, initially imagined the typology as a civic center for car-oriented suburbs. Yet the model eventually became associated with suburban expansion and the decline of traditional downtowns. Its trajectory also changed according to geography. ‘In parts of Asia where cities developed around density rather than suburban expansion, malls often became integrated with public transport networks,’ Gianotten explains. In Hong Kong, where he lived for seven years, shopping, leisure, work, and mobility are often concentrated around a single transit node.
The comparison reveals why importing a planning model from one city to another can be misleading. Urban life is shaped by accumulated infrastructure, cultural habits, land values, political systems, and existing buildings. A strategy that responds to one condition may have a very different consequence somewhere else. OMA’s Roma Continua approaches the problem from this perspective, considering Rome’s future over the next 25 years as a palimpsest. ‘The challenge was to identify what already exists and add new structures and systems that can support future forms of urban life,’ Gianotten explains. The approach suggests a different understanding of urban transformation, based on accumulation. The future city does not necessarily have to erase the structures, habits, and relationships that already give a place its identity.
Roma Continua Mobility | image © IT’S, OMA, OKRA, NET Engineering, and LGSMA
from masterplan to lived neighborhood
This becomes particularly important when architecture moves beyond individual buildings and begins to shape entire districts. Gianotten argues that architects and planners can influence the direction of urban change but cannot produce that change independently. ‘We understand urban planning and architecture not merely as physical artefacts, but as a discipline deeply intertwined with social, economic and political structures,’ he tells us. For him, the architect’s role therefore extends beyond designing a physical environment. OMA’s urban projects operate through conversations between governments, developers, institutions, investors, local communities, and designers. A masterplan can establish a framework, but its success depends on the relationships and decisions that unfold around it. ‘Urban transformation rarely happens through a single grand gesture,’ David Gianotten adds. ‘It often emerges through a combination of projects operating across different timescales, from small-scale urban acupuncture interventions to major infrastructure investments.’
That idea also changes the definition of architectural agency. Gianotten sees architecture as a way of initiating processes, building coalitions, and making alternative futures easier to imagine. ‘I would say the real influence of architecture lies in bringing people together and initiating processes of change. Its limits begin when it assumes it can act alone,’ the architect highlights.
The question of who participates in that process becomes especially important when regeneration involves an existing neighborhood. In Taipei, OMA is working on the redevelopment of 1960s housing in a project commissioned directly by residents. The existing neighborhood is relatively low-density, with interconnected buildings and abundant greenery, characteristics the project takes as evidence of what residents value. ‘Through extensive conversations with residents, we learned that these qualities are precisely what they value and want to preserve,’ Gianotten reflects. The proposal reinterprets the spatial and social qualities of the existing neighborhood while accommodating future needs, marking a small but significant shift in the logic of regeneration by asking what should remain instead of what should be built.
Roma Continua principles | image © IT’S, OMA, OKRA, NET Engineering, and LGSMA
density is also a question of daily life
Housing brings the discussion back to one of the central contradictions of contemporary urbanism. Cities need more homes, but increasing residential density can easily become an exercise in maximizing numbers. In Amsterdam, where land is limited and housing demand remains high, Gianotten argues that density needs to be considered alongside the quality of everyday life. ‘As apartments become smaller and density increases, we must consider the quality of everyday life and ensure that housing does not become socially segregated,’ he shares.
OMA’s Bajes Kwartier is one example of this approach. The former Bijlmerbajes prison is transformed into a neighborhood combining around 1,350 homes with workplaces, leisure programs, gardens, and public spaces. Thirty percent of the housing is social housing, while communal spaces and public routes are integrated throughout the development. According to Gianotten, 98 percent of the materials from the demolished prison, including concrete, steel bars, and cell doors, are reused or recycled. The development also incorporates underground heat and cold storage and photovoltaic installations. In The Martin, one of the recently completed buildings within Bajes Kwartier, interlocking volumes create a more porous relationship between apartments and the surrounding neighborhood. Generous balconies and visual connections encourage residents to engage with both neighbors and public space.
The ambition is therefore not simply to put more people into a smaller area. It is to create the social and environmental infrastructure that allows density to support rather than diminish everyday life.
Roma Continua | image © IT’S, OMA, OKRA, NET Engineering, and LGSMA
designing for change rather than predicting it
If there is a common thread running through Gianotten’s thinking, it is an emphasis on adaptability. Cities cannot be designed once and then left to operate unchanged. Social habits shift, technologies develop, climates change, and economic conditions move with them. For Gianotten, the response is not to attempt increasingly precise predictions about what the city will look like decades from now. Instead, architects should establish frameworks capable of accommodating uncertainty. ‘I think adaptability comes less from trying to predict the future than from creating frameworks that can accommodate change over time,’ he says. ‘This requires collaboration across different stakeholders and disciplines. The challenges we face are interconnected, and it is rarely productive to address them in isolation. I see urban development as a continuous dialogue rather than a series of reactions to individual changes.’
Working across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere has not led him to a single conclusion about what the ideal city should look like but rather has reinforced the importance of distinguishing between universal needs and local responses. ‘The fundamental needs and aspirations of people do not change very much,’ he observes. ‘Safety, access to resources, a sense of community, and a high quality of life are desirable. What varies is how those needs are expressed and how cities respond to them.’ That distinction may be the most useful way to understand the idea of the hyper-local metropolis. Local does not necessarily mean isolated, and global does not necessarily mean standardized. A city can share ambitions around accessibility, sustainability, and quality of life while arriving at very different spatial solutions. The more urgent question, then, may not be whether the fifteen-minute city is the future but who gets to live in it. Gianotten’s answer is ultimately less about a particular distance, density, or urban diagram than about agency. The city has to remain open to the people who inhabit it, rather than being shaped exclusively by the institutions that develop it. ‘As architects and planners, we should also reconsider the idea that we are the sole problem-solvers,’ he suggests. ‘Our role is often to facilitate dialogue, and create meaningful ways for communities to participate in shaping their environments.’
For a planning model built around proximity, that may be the harder proximity to achieve: not simply bringing homes, work, leisure, and services closer together, but bringing the people who shape the city into closer contact with the decisions that determine who can afford to remain there.
The Martin – Bajes Kwartier | image © Ossip van Duivenbode, courtesy of OMA
The Martin – Bajes Kwartier | image © Ossip van Duivenbode, courtesy of OMA
The Martin – Bajes Kwartier | image © Ossip van Duivenbode, courtesy of OMA
Bijlmerbajes | image courtesy of OMA / FABRICations
The Mall – Desire | image courtesy of OMA
The Mall Diagram | image courtesy of OMA
Roma Continua | image © IT’S, OMA, OKRA, NET Engineering, and LGSMA
Feyenoord Waterkant, Vision Diagram | image courtesy of EFFEKT, OMA, LOLA
Feyenoord Waterkant, location plan | image courtesy of EFFEKT, OMA, LOLA
Feyenoord Waterkant, Public Space Section | image courtesy of EFFEKT, OMA, LOLA
VDMA – Siteplan | image courtesy of OMA
project info:
architect: David Gianotten | @david_gianotten_oma, OMA managing partner and architect | @oma.asia, @oma.eu, @omanewyork
This interview is part of designboom’s MODES OF HABITATION chapter, exploring how the spaces we inhabit can reshape the ways we live together. Discover more stories rethinking domesticity, shared living, and the many forms a home can take here.
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