Peter Marino's Brand Buildings

The New York architect combines respect for the past with a brand's essence in store designs for such luxury names as Dior and Vuitton

by Reena Jana

The exterior of the Chanel store in Osaka designed by Marino turns into a giant video screen at night, thanks to thousands of LED lights. Video courtesy Peter Marino Architect

In September, Marino's first furniture pieces available for retail purchase, including this chair, will be available. Courtesy Poltrona Frau

This fall, Marino's luxurious residential project at 170 East End Ave. in New York opens. So far, 80% of the units have sold. Courtesy Peter Marino Architect

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At first, it's easy to mistake the Manhattan office of Peter Marino for an art gallery. The award-winning architect has chosen his sleek, white-walled workplace as the venue to discuss his 10 favorite buildings of all time. His picks include the futuristic, winged Milwaukee Art Museum by Santiago Calatrava, the modernist Seagram Building in New York by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the former Fiat factory in Turin, Italy, which Renzo Piano transformed into an complex of offices, stores, and a hotel.

The front entrance of Marino's own offices doesn't have the look or feel of an architect's studio. It features an abstract painting by the German artist Anselm Kiefer, which takes up an entire wall. An antique Indian statue carved from stone is placed nearby. Across from these works of art, the reception area features several boxy, ultra-modern leather chairs, designed by Marino himself. They're Marino's first foray into retail furniture and part of a new collection for the high-end Italian manufacturer Poltrona Frau, which will hit U.S. stores in September.

The combination of art and architecture is deliberate. "People say my work is sculptural," Marino says as he enters his private workspace, which has large windows and sweeping views of New York City. "But I think it's painterly." The peripatetic Marino, an avid motorcycle fan decked out this day in black leather pants and a black muscle shirt, isn't one to sit still behind a desk. He moves over to a wall, on which are tacked artful sketches and computer renderings for his most recent projects. These include an entire resort on the island of Anguilla for which he's designing every detail, down to the way the bike and footpaths are laid out. He takes down a printout of a computer rendering of another project and carries it back to his desk.

Portrait Painting

"This is a luxury shopping center I'm designing in Calgary," says Marino, pointing to the image on the page. The building's exaggerated rectangular shape is the only clue to the fact that it's, in fact, a mall. The rendering illustrates the layers of stone with which Marino plans to encrust its outer walls and looks more like a stylized interpretation of a high-end shopping center, although it's a literal plan. And when he describes the building site, it's in painterly terms.

"I didn't realize Calgary is so flat. It's like an empty canvas. I was very excited," he recalls. His resulting design, with its subtle yet striking physical reference to the local environment and the area's booming economy, is a 3-D portrait. But first and foremost, it's the latest example of how Marino takes the art of brand building literally.

Widely considered the world's leading designer of flagship stores for the most sought-after and enduring luxury brands, from Dior to Vuitton, Marino is known for staying true to these companies' essences, all the while pushing retail design in dramatic new directions.

At the Fendi stores that opened in Rome and New York in 2005, for instance, Marino used travertine marble as a design detail throughout the boutiques, a reference to the Eternal City's classic architecture (the Coliseum is made from the same type of stone). Marino cut the heavy material using an industrial machine process to achieve an ultra-contemporary effect of geometric waves.

Museum Quality

In his design for Hong Kong's Louis Vuitton flagship (for which he won an American Institute of Architects Honor Award in April), Marino incorporated colorful video projections that are cast on the store's staircase. The projections change hues quickly and theatrically, near window coverings featuring variations of Vuitton's logo turned into decorative patterns.

"Luxury retail should be an experience—a unique and memorable experience," says Marino. His view is that consumers paying premium prices for high-end goods should feel their shopping environment matches the quality and distinctiveness of their purchases. It's a marketing strategy that lures in new well-heeled customers who might be drawn to the spectacle of the stores.