YIMBY sat down with architect and developer Cary Tamarkin — of the eponymous firm — to discuss his latest project at 508 West 24th Street, as well as his background and the inspiration behind his ‘neo-Bauhaus’ aesthetic. YIMBY in bold. How did you get your start in architecture & development, and what’s your background?

So my background — I knew I was going to be an architect at age 12. I drew a lot, and since I started at a young age I was getting a lot of accolades. Then it morphed into architecture, because — actually, I wanted to be a painter, and then somewhere around age 15 or 16 I realized it would probably be hard to make money as a painter, and that I was actually interested in making money. So it occurred to me that architecture might combine art and business — so I continued with architecture, and ended up graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. So I made this decision to go into architecture, went through all the schooling; and in school, people tell you that architects don’t make any money.

But I wasn’t focused on that — I wanted to do good work. After graduating from the GSD I started an architecture business in Boston with a partner, and it became a perfectly great, young, architectural firm — in Boston, it’s also fairly easy to stand out from the pack. We were doing houses, restaurants, clubs — and getting lots of publicity — but then the partnership ran its course over ego-driven things.

But that role was just as an architect, and not as a developer?

Well, after the split, I came back to New York. And at that point, I was tired of working day and night and not making much money. If you’ve been designing buildings since age 12, you’re an architect, and not necessarily a businessman — but I wanted to be a businessman as well. It took me a long time to get to the point where I was ready to not be an architect — and I said to myself, what could I do that at least gives me the chance to make money? Real estate development, advertising — it seemed like stuff I might be good at. I decided on real estate development for no particular reason, and this was in 1991. So I was 34 years old, decided to leave architecture, quit therapy, and ask my girlfriend to marry me, all in the same day!

Was that your mid-life crisis?

No. That came when I got divorced four years ago. But I decided to get into real estate development. And luckily the timing was good; it was the end of the terrible slide that began in ’87, and it was the beginning of a very long upturn. I didn’t know how to do development, I didn’t know what a pro-forma was. I spent six months talking to ex-developers who were wishing they had played golf every day through 1987 because of what had happened — so the climate was bleak. But they did have time on their hands, and many were willing to sit with me and give their wisdom about the business. The more I learned, the more I started walking through Tribeca, and taking pictures of buildings — just learning the city, inside and out.

What year did you buy 508 West 24th Street, and what’s the project’s back-story?

When we started this project — number one, no-one had been doing any new development in the city, and banks were not lending for development projects. There were no projects going on. That’s why everything is coming up out of the ground now. We bought that site for very little money compared to what sites cost now. I was very excited about it because it’s adjacent to The High Line. The Carlyle Group agreed to be my equity partner.

I always say that the building’s aesthetic is neo-Bauhaus; is that accurate?

I guess it is fine to call it “neo-Bauhaus”. At this point it is becoming clear that there is a consistency to our buildings. That is because we are consistently interested in the basic tenets from which all great architecture stems, such as proportion, light and quality of craftsmanship. We refer to this as “classic modernism”. We’re interested in building for the duration of time, so it’ll be there forever or ; we’re also interested in building well, with beautiful materials. No developers splurge for steel windows. None of our projects scream for attention. I like getting attention, but I don’t want to scream for it.