Harshad Pillai is a director at Fogarty Finger, a New York architecture firm that works across multifamily housing, office buildings and commercial interiors. He grew up in Bombay, studied there and at the University of Texas at Arlington, and has practiced in New York for more than twenty years. He sits on a committee that reviews the city's zoning proposals, so he sees both the drawings and the rules that decide whether they get built.

Harshad Pillai, Director, Fogarty Finger Architecture

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In this conversation

Harshad's path from reading decades-old copies of Architectural Record in Bombay to seeing his own downtown Brooklyn office building published in it.

Why a building that matches its renderings is his firm's measure of success, and how rigorous 3D visualization keeps design intent from peeling off.

The mechanics of the 12 FAR residential cap and why it keeps deep, post-war office towers from working as housing.

The uniform 20 percent bonus for permanently affordable housing, and his argument that the answer is simply to build more.

His advice to young architects: your job is not to draw, it is to move the process forward.

The answer is to build more. The answer is to incentivize to build more, because we have a very painful, huge shortage of housing.

Harshad Pillai

Chapters

From Bombay to Architectural Record

Mentors, New York's granular ways, and buildings that look like their renderings.

The office owner's dilemma

Record-low housing vacancy, falling new-building filings and a glut of unwanted office space.

By the numbers

New York City rental vacancy rate

20173.63%

20214.5%

20231.4%

Harshad cites the 1.4 percent vacancy rate as proof of how short the city is on housing, even while its economy is doing well.

Source: NYC Comptroller, Spotlight: New York City's Housing Supply Challenge (NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey data) ↗

Freeing up conversions

How the 12 FAR cap and the window-to-depth rule lock up volume in big office buildings.

Build more, everywhere

Rewriting the city's housing zoning with one affordability bonus across every district.

By the numbers

City of Yes for Housing Opportunity

Dec 5, 2024

approved by the City Council

80,000

new homes expected over 15 years

20%

more housing allowed if the extra homes are permanently affordable

$5B

for infrastructure and housing

Harshad expected the rezoning, with its uniform 20 percent bonus, to pass before the end of the year. It did, on December 5, 2024.

Source: NYC Mayor's Office (December 2024) ↗

Heat pumps and timber

Electrified systems, better envelopes and mass timber to cut embodied carbon.

Move the process forward

Valuing time, drawing only what is needed, and learning just enough about every new tool.

Your job is not to draw. Drawing is one of your roles, but your job is to move the process forward.

Harshad Pillai

Takeaways

Before converting an office, check the floor plate: residential rooms deeper than about 30 feet from a window make poor homes, and 80-foot-deep post-war floors need courtyards cut in to work.

Large conversions in Manhattan depend on state law: raising the 12 FAR residential cap and allowing deeper units would let far more of an existing office building become housing.

Render the project fully, inside and out, and make no decision along the way that departs from what was visualized. That is how the finished building ends up looking like the design.

We don't specialize in anything. Our knowledge is extremely accretive.

Harshad Pillai