Tour Ray’s headquarters in the Seagram Building, an ode to art and…

Enter Ray’s office in the Seagram Building

The developer’s projects include Ray Philly starring Leong Leong; Ray Harlem, in collaboration with Frida Escobedo and Little Wing Lee; and Ray Phoenix and Ray Nashville, both with Johnston Marklee and Parts and Labor. In the residential real estate landscape, this type of pedigree is typically reserved for condominiums, but all of Ray’s projects are mixed-use rental buildings, with apartments on the upper floors and cultural programming at street level. While cities across the country are pursuing mixed-use projects to bring much-needed housing to urban centers, the aesthetics are generally woefully nondescript and the design value is sophisticated.

Ray’s projects, on the other hand, focus on design and are therefore more citizen-oriented – an approach that entices his collaborators. “Multifamily rental housing is one of the most important typologies we can invest in today to make our cities more livable,” says Sharon Johnston of Johnston Marklee. “Human scale and attention to detail.” [in these projects] will contribute to pedestrian life in these cities.’

Located on the border of Philadelphia’s Fishtown and Kensington, former industrial areas now arts centers, Ray Philly, the first completed project, demonstrates this approach. Architects Leong Leong knew that the building had to engage with the neighborhood. “For us this meant engaging with the materiality of the historic buildings and thinking about how we could work with brick in a tactile way to create a story that is tied to its place through a sense of depth and relief – not an easy one Abandonment within typical development constraints,” says Dominic Leong. For the façade, the company chose the same hand-split brick that can be found in Herzog & de Meuron’s Vitra display depot in Germany. On the ground floor there is a co-working lounge, artist studios, and a retail and project space for Ulises, a local art book publisher.

Thanks to its design and programming, Ray Philly feels like it has always been a part of the area, even though it only opened in 2023. “It makes us happy when residents ask, ‘What was this building used to be?’” says Demisch. “It is our ultimate goal that our development projects feel at home in the neighborhoods in which we build, while making an architecturally significant contribution for decades to come.”

A similar neighborhood-specific approach can be found in all of Ray’s projects. Ray Harlem, scheduled to open later this year, will include more than 200 market-rate and affordable apartments and will also be the new home of the National Black Theater, founded in New York in 1968. The building’s pink-red brick facade evokes the atmosphere of Nigeria’s Osun-Osogbo sacred grove (the theater’s former space has been decorated with sculptures by contemporary artists from the grove) and its ground floor “living room” will be open to the public. Ray Phoenix, which opened in 2026, is also based on its surroundings. Its green façade will change with sunlight throughout the day – “a reflection of the transience of life in an arid climate,” says Johnston. She’s still fine-tuning the Ray Nashville project, but when it’s finished in 2027, his blues will mingle with the sky.

Demisch hopes Ray’s approach appeals to other developers. “We need a paradigm shift where visual culture is not treated as an afterthought but rather recognized as a cornerstone of development practices for the benefit of residents and the entire community,” she says.

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