At the desk of: Cary Tamarkin

Cary Tamarkin founded the Manhattan real estate firm Tamarkin Company, but he’s not your average New York City developer. A Harvard-trained architect, Tamarkin has a hand in designing all of the firm’s projects, which include the boutique condominium 456 West 19th Street — known for its curving upper balconies — and the highly anticipated 15-unit 508 West 24th Street, which will launch sales this month. And when deciding what to build and when, he said he’s guided by the urge to create homes that he “would want to live in” rather than by pure profit. “I have an angel architect on one shoulder and a devil developer on the other,” Tamarkin said. Besides building condos, Tamarkin occasionally does a standalone project, like converting a West Village firehouse into a townhouse for CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. And his firm is currently working on its first Miami project, a two-story retail building in the city’s Design District. Tamarkin showed TRD around his loft-like work space at 56 West 22nd Street.