Brandon Maldonado.
Brandon Maldonado, 31
Associate at Fogarty Finger Architecture
Brandon Maldonado started his career like many young architects, doing competition entries and concept work at smaller firms.
After finishing his five-year bachelor’s in architecture at Syracuse University, Maldonado worked at FREE, the Fernando Romero Enterprise, a Mexico-based design firm with a small office in New York City. Then came a stint at the LOT Office for Architecture, where he mostly worked on concept and competition work and designed a beach club in Greece. Then he joined Fogarty Finger’s commercial interiors team as a junior architect in 2014. During his tenure at the firm, he has watched his team grow from two people to 20.
“It’s a place that feels like home at this point,” he said.
Some of his biggest projects: a corporate amenity center at 1700 Broadway, which includes a midcentury modern-inspired tenant lounge and 2,200-square-foot rooftop terrace, an 8,000-square-foot lobby redesign in Hudson Square, and a series of amenity centers for a landlord that owns office buildings in the Financial District and Midtown East. His first major ground-up construction project is underway at 141 Willoughby Street in Downtown Brooklyn, where Savanna Real Estate is building a 400,000-square-foot office and retail building.
As one of Fogarty Finger’s most senior members, Maldonado works to mentor and educate his team, and bring a practical approach to designing commercial interiors.
“A huge part of what I do is trying to teach,” Maldonado said. “My team is the most important part of what happens, so I’m always trying to elevate them to a new understanding of thinking ahead. We design things, and I’m always the person sitting in our design meetings saying, ‘It looks good but can we build it?’”
Maldonado, born in Brooklyn and raised in Long Island’s Port Washington, decided to become an architect after spending lots of time staring at buildings on trips into the city with his parents.
“They kept our Brooklyn apartment for some years and I grew up coming into the city regularly,” he explained. “But I don’t like crowds. And so I spent lots of time looking up and looking at buildings instead of people.”
On the weekends, he enjoys riding his motorcycle around the tristate, and Bear Mountain is one of his favorite destinations.—R.B.R.
