Harsh Parikh
president
Harsh@SantulanArch.com
Our Founder, Harsh Parikh, is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished architects in the Rocky Mountain region. His extensive skill set, coupled with his engaging communication style, distinguishes him and enables him to play a pivotal role in the development process, adding significant value.
Real Estate Development, particularly in the realm of housing, is a complex and challenging journey, fraught with risks, obstacles, and pitfalls at every step. Elected officials, Neighborhood Organizations, City Officials, Lenders, Investors, Design Review Boards, Builders, and numerous other stakeholders often have their own divergent interests and intricate requirements that must all be met. Essentially, a development project must navigate a gauntlet while striving to satisfy a diverse range of individuals. It takes an extraordinary set of skills for an Architect to successfully navigate this challenging terrain. It requires a deep well of knowledge and experience, an empathetic and engaging communication style, a nimble design sensibility, and the ability to craft a compelling narrative that guides a project from inception to fruition. Harsh Parikh, with his unparalleled expertise in entitlement processes, development regulations, life safety codes, accessibility codes, urban design, building design, sustainable design, healthy design, design documentation, construction technologies, construction processes, lending requirements, marketing strategies, and building operations, is uniquely qualified to serve as a comprehensive advisor for any development effort. Having previously played the role of a developer himself, his unique skill set has a proven track record.
With a history of successful involvement in widely acclaimed multifamily and mixed-use projects, encompassing over 14,000 housing units and numerous award-winning urban, suburban, rural, and mountain projects, Harsh has demonstrated that a diverse skill set, when paired with empathetic communication and patient advocacy, can foster mutually beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders and lay the groundwork for successful development.
Harsh earned his Bachelor of Architecture from M.S. University in India, where he received the Design Gold Medal and the Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, which is awarded to the Valedictorian. His outstanding academic achievements continued at CU Denver, where he was granted a Merit Scholarship and completed his Master of Architecture with the highest grade average. In 1995, Harsh joined our predecessor firm, Murphy Stevens Architects, and gradually led its transformation first into Parikh Stevens Architects, and subsequently into Santulan Architecture.
Today, as the President of Santulan Architecture, Harsh leads one of the most accomplished and experienced design teams specializing in multifamily and mixed-use projects in the Rocky Mountain region.
GET TO KNOW Harsh
What is the most gratifying part of your work?
Housing is a basic human need. It really plays a central role in creating stable lives and stable societies. I have always instinctively understood the significance of housing even as far back as my college days, where I would inevitably gravitate towards projects involving housing, particularly urban housing. So, in essence, I have spent the last 30 years cultivating a deep reservoir of experience, research, and design refinement of housing design. In short, I am a housing expert.
Increasingly, housing is becoming a hot button issue. Issues pertaining to density, gentrification, and equitable access to affordable housing are playing a larger role in our greater political discourse. There is a palpable sense that we urgently need more high quality housing that is attainable to a wide variety of income levels and demographics. It is pretty gratifying then, to be able to play a significant role in creating sustainable, healthy, contextual housing that is also affordable to build. As someone who specializes in housing, you do feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in the fact that you are helping solve one of society’s problems with your hard work and ingenuity.
What is the one thing that you could change about the Architectural profession today?
Architecture has always had a bit of an identity crisis. Is it an artistic, a technical, or a service profession? One of the problems with our profession is that starting from college, the artistic part of the profession gets overly glorified to the detriment of the technical side. This is then reinforced in the latter part of their careers where Architects are solely judged and lauded for their aesthetic outcomes. This creates a perverse incentive within the profession to elevate aesthetics above all else and to denigrate detailing and code expertise as prosaic and mundane parts of the profession best relegated to nerdy third parties.
I believe that an Architect is an artist, a technician, and a service professional in equal measure, and the crux of an Architect’s success lies in balancing the often conflicting imperatives of their profession. This theory is deeply embedded in the culture of Santulan Architecture where we strive daily to balance the Art and Science of our profession. While maintaining our artistic integrity, we are able to create technically sound and code compliant buildings that also meet our client’s aesthetic and financial goals.
What is the best meal you’ve ever had?
At the Culver City restaurant Vespertine. It was the most curated and intense artistic experience I have ever been subjected to. The food (by Michelin Star chef Jordan Kahn), the building (The Waffle by architect Eric Owen Moss), the music (Original Score by the band This Will Destroy You), the dinnerware (by Japanese ceramicist Ryota Aoki), and scores of other design features such as flatware, sculptures, lighting, fabrics, furniture, the servers’ uniforms, and even the scent of the air were all carefully crafted by well-known local artists and integrated into a single holistic design narrative that was awe inspiring. Critics have described meals at Vespertine as too avant-garde or pretentious, but as a designer you must respect the painstaking attention to detail and the audacity it takes to pull together such an ambitious artistic collaboration. And I thought the food was amazing too!
Which is your favorite building? Who is your favorite Architect?
My favorite building is the Duomo in Florence, Italy. The building is 600 years old and it took 140 years to build. The design is credited to Filippo Brunelleschi – the father of lateral thinking – but he wasn’t even born till the 80th year of the Duomo’s construction! At the time of Brunelleschi’s birth, majority of the cathedral structure had been completed but not the dome since nobody had been able to figure out how to span 150’ using unbuttressed masonry. Brunelleschi was nominated as the Architect of the cathedral at the tender age of 23, and promptly managed to solve the dome design problem that had plagued generations of Florentine architects for 80 years. Neither an Architect nor an Engineer by training (he was a goldsmith), Brunelleschi solved the dome by coming up with several path-breaking innovations. He pioneered the use of brick herringbone pattern in domes, he pioneered the idea of a dome within a dome, he invented the use of barrel hoop braces in domes, and he invented the reverse axel crane during construction. As if the engineering innovations weren’t enough, he put finishing touches on a building that is by far the most elegant of all the great renaissance cathedrals. To this day the majestic Duomo dominates the skyline of Florence and is emblematic of Florentine culture and identity. No Architect in history typifies the Balance of Art and Science better than Brunelleschi, and that’s why he remains my favorite Architect.