![]() With the residential came the commercial, and Fred Pressman of Barneys New York, Manhattan’s pre-eminent fashion outlet, was first to make the call. I started to do residential projects because that’s the work that came my way, those were the people I was mixing with.” “I met the Getty family and the Rothschild’s there, who I both worked for, and that’s where I met Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent, who were also my early patrons. “I ended up redoing the last installation of The Factory, and The Factory was everything,” he has admitted. If it was ok for Warhol, it was certainly ok for the legion of those who followed. It was a very beautiful, very masculine look, and one that formed the backbone of my own personal aesthetic.” “He loved the idea of restoring the place to its original New York polish and filled it with early American antiques, which I never expected to see. In 1974 Warhol “Purchased an extremely upscale and beautiful Georgian town house on E66 Street,” explains Marino. Warhol may have been the ultimate contact, but he also introduced the fledgling architect to a new way of thinking. ![]() “The entire world came through the doors of The Factory,” says James Anderson, a British journalist who has taken a keen interest in Marino’s career, “it was the perfect start”. ![]() A life changing introduction drew him into the orbit of Andy Warhol-never one to miss a beat-forging an enduring bond that would serve him well. Upon graduation, the wily student swiftly infiltrated New York society armed with swaggering confidence and razor sharp ideas in equal measure. I thought, I’ve got a better chance of doing something gorgeous in architecture than pushing the fine art scene.” Architecture came easily to me, so self interest made me decide to get into that instead. I saw what the Pop Artists were doing, pushing things twenty years into the future, and I just didn’t know if I could do that myself. “I used to come to New York a lot and visit the artist’s studios-people like Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Frank Stella. Marino studied painting at Cornell University at a time when America was waking up to a new and radical movement. Yes, there are gimmicky touches, and I dare say some of his work will date, but nothing can take away from the artistry he continually mocks his competitors with.” He has done remarkable things that will stand the test of time, and that’s primarily because there is real innovation taking place. “The work is thought through and beautifully accomplished, there is nothing perfunctory or slapdash in its execution. “In his milieu, Peter Marino stands like a giant,” says architectural author Jonathan Chadwick. ![]() He is the go-to figure for conspicuous consumption, a dream weaver in marble and gold. If you’ve entered a Chanel, Dior or Louis Vuitton store in the past decade, Marino’s aesthetic could well have been the trigger for that ‘investment’ purchase. But he is perhaps most famous for the raft of stores he has imagined and executed for the world’s most prestigious fashion houses. For almost fifty years this striking character has applied architectural nous to a dazzling array of commissions, including private homes for the superannuated, grand, conceptual interiors, and all manner of radical side projects. Marino-let’s call a spade a spade and anoint him with the mantle of ‘starchitect’-is a man obsessed with style. I call myself an interior architect, but for me interior, exterior and landscape architecture, they’re all the same. “I feel my style is something that defines the time in which we live,” he said with characteristic zeal, “in that it combines many things: art, textiles, furniture, and a very definite modernity in architecture. ![]() Here was the embodiment of their world: an ‘on the money’ obsessive with the highest regard for the well crafted. He told tales of clean lines and daring façades, of risk taking and no-brainer beauty. When architect Peter Marino-a vision in black leather-sat down to talk to Vogue Italia, the venerated style bible must have thought they’d struck gold. ![]()
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