citybiz: Q&A with Haril Pandya + Aksel Solberg, Founders of SPARC

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Haril Pandya, FAIA: CEO and Founder

A design leader and strategist with deep experience across mixed-use, multifamily, adaptive reuse + repositioning, hospitality, and urban design.

Haril brings a strong understanding of development, client goals, approvals, community context, and the broader forces that determine whether a project can move forward.

Haril has learned that the best teams are the ones people want to be part of. It shapes how he leads – creating the energy, openness, and trust that make people want to contribute, challenge ideas, and stay engaged.

Aksel Solberg, AIA: CIO and Founder

Architect, design thinker, and technology leader bringing together design, building science, development thinking, and new ways of working. Aksel leads SPARC’s technology direction, exploring how digital tools can expand what the team can see, test, and make without replacing experience or creative judgment.

Aksel has carried one piece of advice with him since early in his career: take what you do seriously, but take yourself lightly. It shapes how he approaches the work – deeply invested in getting it right without becoming precious about himself or the idea.

What is the mission of SPARC?

Rather than approaching architecture as an isolated design exercise, we consider the economic, technical, cultural, and human forces that will determine whether a project succeeds. On a daily basis, our team utilizes a highly innovative and efficient approach to creating great architecture, driven by an AI-powered delivery model that leverages technology not only to unlock increased accuracy and quality, but to drive stakeholder satisfaction.

What type of projects is your team ideally suited for?

There’s no wrong answer to this question, but we certainly have a few sweet spots. From a portfolio standpoint, we have deep expertise in developer-driven work, including mixed-use and multi-family, as well as hospitality, corporate, and retail projects. However, we also routinely consult with clients on master plan exercises, building repositioning, asset strategy, and interior design programs.

How is your firm different from other design studios?

After decades of leading teams at major architecture firms representing significant developers and private clients, we felt that many owners were hungry for a different approach to design. By leveraging knowledge of zoning requirements, development economics, and building science, SPARC offers an approach that creates spaces which perform economically and technically while putting the community’s desired outcomes first.

What is one major pain point you fix for commercial clients?

We reveal possibilities and create greater impact for clients ready to imagine what could be, transforming projects into distinctive places that enrich how people feel, experience, and connect. By combining artistic imagination with AI-powered tools, SPARC is able perform meaningful sentiment analysis to ensure the final design is already calibrated to the market it will occupy and the people who will live or work there.

What are some projects your team is currently engaged with?

There’s more to come here that we can’t yet discuss, but we’re actively retained on several mixed-use, multi-family, and retail projects in major destinations like Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, MA, Portsmouth, NH, and Kennebunk, Maine.

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