estudioOCA is an international studio founded by Ignacio Ortinez and Bryan Cantwell in 2007, formed from its origin to focus on urbanism and landscape issues on a global scale. The studio’s primary offices are located in San Francisco, Barcelona and Bangkok, with network offices in Mexico City and Santiago de Chile.
estudioOCA takes a rational, pragmatic approach to urbanization and the landscape, responding to ecological, social, and political forces, and developing frameworks for transformation to meet current and future demands. The studio provides a conceptual rethinking of the public domain, revealing new opportunities for cities and open space. We work in parallel with, and in response to, infrastructure deployment, adapting mobility networks to greater bicycle and pedestrian uses, creating vital interconnections throughout urban environments. We work with cities to extract public space from outmoded uses. We work with architects, engineers, developers and other professionals to build socially interactive places.
estudioOCA’s networked structure allows the studio to perform work locally on a global scale, adapting to local customs, cultures, and laws, enabling the studio to work throughout Spain, the United States, Thailand, Canada, Chile, Morocco, France, Brazil, and Mexico. This structure provides for flexibility, efficiency and proximity to projects and clients, assisting in maintaining high design and construction standards. Our diverse multicultural and multinational team composition allows us to understand and see local cultural and social issues on a wider perspective, integrating a cultural layer on top of the rational foundation.
Our team’s multidisciplinary background, composed of landscape architects, architects, urbanists, and landscape ecologists, allows for a greater understanding of the interface between building, infrastructure, and landscape. Landscape serves as common ground where designed natural systems, urbanised space, and structures intersect.