Design-Build Projects by DDG and Tamarkin

Being a designer is certainly challenging. Ditto being a developer. But some firms manage both to design and to develop.

DDG sometimes goes even further, constructing and managing its properties as well. For 180 East 88th Street, at 50 stories soon to be the tallest apartment building on the Upper East Side, DDG is throwing some curves into the design. Arches will evoke both caves and cathedrals in the lobby, then reappear at the pinnacle of the facade, fronting penthouse terraces. While the handmade bricks for the exterior are imported from Denmark, and the oversize windows are Italian, the views are genuine New York.

Tamarkin Co.’s founder and president, trained architect Cary Tamarkin, usually draws inspiration from what’s down on street level—the tough, workaday buildings of the city. His designs rely on brick, concrete, and factory-style gridded steel-framed windows as a way to fit in with the old industrial buildings in Chelsea and the West Village, where his projects tends to be. Which is not to say they’re cookie-cutter. With 550 West 29th Street, a 12-story apartment building currently under construction, he’s taken the factory-window concept to the nth degree.