OHK is driven by an obsession with placemaking. We believe in the importance of place-based identity as a corrective to poor planning, mass-produced design, and sprawl. To capture this sense of place, we follow a multidisciplinary process through which we conduct culturally, environmentally, and geographically nuanced analyses sensitive to event and locale.

Too often, a place’s identity is conceived purely through a historical lens that disprivileges it in a globalized and networked world. To the places we design, we apply principles that are respectful of heritage and context but that are also mindful of today’s global knowledge economy. Whether on the scale of town centers, main streets, retail realms, housing projects, or historic rehabilitation schemes, we bolster the identity of places by underscoring urban competitiveness, focusing on specialization and smart growth, planning for intelligent living and social services, cultivating entrepreneurship and innovation, integrating community-based economic development and social inclusion, curating art and culture, and building strong governance.