About Us
Impact One is committed to bringing ecosystem design into urban development by developing comprehensive methodologies that help cities protect and restore natural systems. We focus on practical and scalable solutions that safeguard biodiversity, reintegrate nature into urban environments, and reconnect culture and nature.
Our work spans four pillars and is delivered together with leading industry and policy experts, as well as a network of partners and affiliated companies united in the mission to create nature-positive contemporary urban societies.
We engage in large scale urban development projects, creating a cohesive ecosystem of entities that are leaders in their respective sector. These collaborations facilitate the execution of comprehensive ecosystem design, leveraging the strengths and expertise of each organisation.
The Impact One Ecosystem uses impact-driven parameters to develop innovative
infrastructure and assign a market value to ecosystem services and natural assets.
The Four Pillars
of Impact One
Core Sectors and Capabilities
Impact One facilitates large-scale investments into urban development by employing a comprehensive ecosystem design approach, ensuring that all necessary sectors are integrated to masterplan nature-positive cities.
Cidade Matarazzo, São Paulo (2021)
Urban Development & Real Estate
Creating landmark destinations together with leaders in urban development to design, construct and operate inner-city infrastructure and urban renewal projects.
Architectural Design
Urban Planning
Mobility Concepts
Land Management
Urban Infrastructure Operation
PNAT, Forest of Montopoli (2021)
Ecosystem Design & Restoration
Establishing a new global standard for urban development by incorporating nature-based solutions (NbS) to ensure the wellbeing of inhabitants.
Natural Resource Management
Ecosystem Service Design
Urban Afforestation
Landscape Design
Soil Regeneration
Jeppe Hein, Path of Silence (2016)
Cultural & Experiential Programming
Catalysing the culture-driven paradigm shift needed to address the current climate crisis by reconnecting humans with nature through the experience economy.
Cultural Production and Art Commissions
Large-scale Installations
Public Programming
Community Engagement
Wellbeing Education Programme
Glasgow Park Reforestation by Impact One and SUGi, COP26 (2021)
Impact Assessment & Financing
Developing alternative economic models for sustainable urbanisation and compensation mechanisms, while remaining committed to the preservation of existing natural environments
Lifecycle Assessments
Natural Capital Accounting
Impact Monitoring
Impact Certificates
Nature-Positive Financing
How We Operate
Urban Development & Investment
Initiating large scale projects together with leaders in green urban development and architecture design, developing climate resilient and adaptive infrastructure.
Development
Investment
Fund Initiation
Urban Infrastructure Operation
Public-Private Partnerships
Working with public entities through Public–Private Partnerships, Build–Operate–Transfer structures, and long-term concessions to deliver nature-positive assets.
Water Management
Green Blue Infrastructure
Temperature Management
Biodiversity Increase
Ecosystem Performance Contracting (EPC)
Achieving benchmarks for cost efficiency is pivotal across KPIs incl. heat mitigation, water management, and biodiversity enhancement.
Cooling Benefits
Cost Reduction
Flood Prevention
Drought Prevention
Urban Design Services
Holistic services focused on human and environmental wellbeing that reconnect individuals with the natural world through innovative, educational and cultural programming.
Architectural Design
Masterplan Development
Ecosystem Design
Experiential Designtion
A Shift in Balance
In 2020, we reached the tipping point where global human-made mass exceeded all living biomass, disrupting the balance of the living systems that regulate the Earth.
Humans make up only 0.01% of the mass of living beings on Earth, yet 2020 marked the turning point at which the mass of human-produced objects (excluding waste) became greater than the world’s total biomass.
Plants, essential to creating life-supporting conditions on our planet, are being replaced in cities by inert artificial matter.
"We need to bring back to the town nature. I mean a new town where everything is covered by plants, everything is under the plants, where the plants are inside of the buildings. Did you ask yourself why there are no plants indoors, why in our hospitals, in our schools, in our offices, there are no plants?”
Co-Founder of PNAT, Author & Professor of Botany at the University of Florence
Interdisciplinary Approach to Environmental and Human
The One Health Research Centre (OHRC), founded by Impact One in 2022, was created in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The global shutdown exposed the deep interconnections between mental health, environmental degradation, chronic lifestyle-related diseases and the fragility of public health systems. What first appeared as a viral crisis revealed itself as an immune-system crisis, rooted in the way we design and inhabit our cities.
The OHRC builds on the One Health approach, a framework endorsed by leading global health institutions that recognises the interdependence of human, animal and environmental health. This approach forms the basis of Impact One’s holistic methodology for urban development – creating environments that are species-specific, symbiotic with nature and conducive to the interconnected health of humans, animals and plants.
The centre investigates how urban environments shape public wellbeing and develops integrative, evidence-based strategies to address civilisation diseases, rapid urbanisation and climate change. It also explores legal, financial and educational mechanisms that can help scale nature-based and regenerative solutions, enabling long-term systems change.
Research areas
Preventive Health
Investigation into diseases and their prevention, in particular lifestyle and environment- caused infectious and civilisation diseases
Nature-Based Solutions
Climate Protection
The continuous research and development of emission-reducing and climate-protecting means and processes
Sustainable Development
Investigation of strategies in architecture, urban planning and mobility for the creation of health-promoting environments
Bioeconomy
Analysis and development of innovative business models enabling the transition from extractive to regenerative economies
Education
Common formats are developed to sensitize, mobilize and qualify people to become active for a One Health paradigm change
For detailed research, publications and programmes, visit the One Health Research
Centre website: ohrc.one.
