He Didn’t Want to Work in NYC. Now He’s Rebuilding It.
Slice of Construction Team
08/12/2025
Bill Mandara thought he’d spend his career working out of a cozy New Jersey office. Instead, he’s leading a 140-person architecture firm with projects stretching from Times Square to Tampa.
What Mancini Duffy Actually Does
Mancini Duffy is a full-service architecture and design firm with a deeply varied portfolio. They do everything from aviation terminals and healthcare facilities to luxury homes and restaurant rollouts. While they still have a strong reputation for New York City interiors, they’re far from a one-trick pony.
How It All Started
Mandara’s path was practically written into his DNA. His great-grandfather immigrated from Sicily and worked as a laborer. His grandfather was a mason contractor. His dad? A general contractor. So it was only natural for Bill to veer into architecture.
After a decade at a small New Jersey firm, he joined Mancini Duffy following an acquisition. At the time, he didn’t want to work in New York City, but the transition stuck. He met Christian, now his business partner, and they led a multi-year ownership transition that culminated in 2017. Back then, the firm had about 50 people. Today, they’ve nearly tripled in size and added offices across the country.
Why Mancini Duffy Stands Out
Mandara isn’t interested in rinse and repeat architecture. He’s drawn to complexity, like TSX Broadway, a project that involved lifting a 100-year-old Broadway theater 30 feet in the air to make room for a new tower in Times Square.
That kind of challenge lights him up. It’s not just about design. It’s about solving unpredictable problems in buildings that hide “gremlins” from decades past. What sets his team apart is how they navigate those issues collaboratively, with contractors, engineers, and owners all pulling in the same direction.
A Customer Story
One early-career lesson came during a difficult project where tempers flared. Mandara told a young team member: stay cool, work through it, and you just might land a client for life. A decade later, that same project is still in Mancini Duffy’s portfolio and that same colleague now leads it as a principal.
Who They Help
From clients building hospitals to restaurateurs rolling out franchises, Mancini Duffy’s strength lies in their diversity. They work with people who might only build once in their lives, and Mandara’s team knows how to make that experience as stress-free as possible. As he puts it: people want to work with people they’d have a beer with.
Where It’s Going
The firm is embracing new ways to deliver projects, particularly in AR, VR, and eventually AI. They even have in-house software developers working on tools that could one day replace static blueprints with dynamic 3D models for approval and construction. The holy grail? A Revit model so smart that city officials could just hit “approve” and builders could go to work.
Conclusion
Bill Mandara may not have planned to become the face of a growing architecture firm, but his grounded, no-nonsense approach is exactly what’s helping Mancini Duffy thrive. “It’s not really that deep,” he says of the drama that can sometimes cloud the creative process. At the end of the day, he believes success comes down to being cool under pressure and building the kind of team people actually want to work with.
