mike’s story

Mike got his start in the design world in 1976 as an exhibit technician for the National Park Service at the Interpretive Design Center in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia during the summer months while attending Pratt Institute during the school year. Other early jobs include selling scale model trains in New York City, where he designed the toy train layout for Macy’s Herald Square Santa Land. Mike also worked as a salesperson for Charrette Corporation in 1978, which lead him to his first real architecture job, hand inking elevations of a 1920s skyscraper.

After graduating from Pratt Institute in 1983 and a summer leading bicycle tours, he continued his apprenticeship by working for different architecture firms located in New York City including: Delacour & Ferrara, Architects and Shelton, Mindel and Associates. In 1985, Mike joined Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, where he worked on the Los Angeles Central Library, the Glimmerglass Opera Theater and the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mike became a project architect at Hirsch Danois Partnership, where he worked on school projects and helped to design a new camp for the Fresh Air Fund.

In the early 1990s, Mike completed his first significant project as an independent architect: an adaptive re-use of the 1910 Tennis House in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, a teaching and exhibit facility for environmental awareness and urban exploration.

In the late 1990s, Mike worked as a project architect at Karplus & Nussbaum Architects gaining expertise in area of corporate office design. From 1997–1999, Mike was the project architect in charge of a team of designers tasked with renovating and reinventing the old GTE headquarters in Stamford, CT into a new headquarters for the Zurich Financial Center.

In 1999, Mike moved to London, England with the intention of working for British Architecture Firms. His career took an unexpected turn when he met up with an American architect who had recently moved to England and had started an architecture firm specializing in providing offsite fabricated buildings to the British affordable housing market. Mike joined this effort, The Forge Company, as the 3rd employee and over the course of 5 years, became a part owner and a design and IT director. The Forge Company pioneered the use of pre-fab light gage steel in affordable housing, bringing together the use of LGS panels, 3-D LGS modules and hot-rolled steel elements.

During 2004, Mike served as president of the United Kingdom chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He designed and ran a series of architectural cycling tours that explored the environment of greater London.

At the beginning of 2005, upon the closing of The Forge Company, Mike returned to the USA aboard the Queen Elizabeth II and settled in Boston, Massachusetts. His daughter was also born in 2005.

Mike worked for CBT architects in Boston from 2005 to 2007 as a Project Architect, on various corporate and education projects. In late 2007 he moved to working for The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, as the Senior Project Designer, managing enhancement projects to the new mile-long Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston.

During 2007, Mike designed a professional continuing education course called ‘Offsite Fabrication for Housing’ which has been offered at Pratt Institute in New York City every year since 2008. See the Teaching Section.

Mike left the Greenway Conservancy in 2010 and started Hargidon Architecture + Design, LLC in Beverly , Massachusetts. At the same time, he also designed and managed a major gut-rehab and green addition to his family’s home in Beverly Farms, MA. See the Projects section.

Hargidon Architecture + Design, LLC relocated to Ipswich, MA in 2023.