Peter Marino

Peter Marino (born 1949) is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is the principal of Peter Marino Architect PLLC, an architecture and design firm which he founded in 1978.The firm is based in New York City with 160 employees and offices in Philadelphia and Southampton.

Marino graduated from Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, New York City. Marino earned a degree from the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.

Marino began his architectural career working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, George Nelson, and I.M. Pei. In 1978, Andy Warhol hired him to do a renovation project for his townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the third incarnation of Warhol's Factory at 860 Broadway. His work for Warhol led to residential commissions from clients in the art world as well as the European aristocracy.

Notable projects

In 1985, the Pressman family, who owned Barneys New York at the time, hired Marino to design the women's retail concept for the department store.This was Marino’s first retail project, which led to his designing 17 freestanding Barneys department stores in the U.S. and Japan between 1986 and 1993. Marino's work for Barneys put him in contact with other fashion designers for whom he went on to design boutiques, such as Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Ermenegildo Zegna and Fendi, and eventually Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton.

In 1996, Marino designed a freestanding boutique on New York City's Madison Avenue for Giorgio Armani.

In 2004, The New York Times reported that Marino is “widely credited with proving the theory that architectural design can be a strong component of a shopper's identification with a brand”, citing the freestanding Giorgio Armani flagship Marino designed in 1996 on Madison Avenue as the embodiment of Armani's “trademark minimalism.” The article also references the 2004 Chanel tower in Japan’s Ginza district, “that takes Coco Chanel's signature black and white tweed and explodes it into three dimensions." The 56-meter high building incorporated a curtain wall of glass encapsulating a nest-shaped block of aluminum in Chanel handbags’ signature tweed pattern. Notable features included a first of its kind interactive glass facade with 700,000 embedded light-emitting diodes, and a system of 1,120 square meters of canvas roll blinds and state-changing electronic privacy glass which allowed office workers to see out during the day, while providing a black background for the display at night.

Boontheshop, Seoul

In 2007, Marino's first luxury condominium high rise project opened at 170 East End Avenue in New York City.The building has an expansive marble lobby, leading out to a garden and waterfall in the back.

In October 2014, Marino designed the flagship store in Seoul, Korea's Cheongdam-dong neighborhood for Boontheshop, a retail brand owned by Shinsegae, a South Korean luxury product specialist.The 55,000 square foot project consists of two angular buildings clad in white marble, connected by glass bridges.It was Marino's first multi-brand store since the Barney's project.

In January 2015, Marino completed the flagship Louis Vuitton shop on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills, California.The design included a three-layer facade consisting of louver-like stainless steel ribbons over glass over squares of white fabric, which LA Times' fashion reporter Adam Tschorn described as being designed to create an indoor/outdoor feeling.

In 2012, Marino was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture in recognition of his significant contributions to the arts in France.

Marino is married to the costume designer Jane Trapnell; the couple have a daughter. Marino is an art collector; collecting French porcelain, contemporary paintings, modern art, and French and Italian bronzes from the mid 16th to the mid 18th century. Marino's collection of bronzes was displayed at London's Wallace Collection in 2010. He is also notable for his personal fashion style, which he has called a "tattooed biker look", but just as a "decoy". It features mostly black clothing, leather with buckles and studs, and a leather cap.