This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies
By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn More
This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
Architectural Record logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Architectural Record logo
  • NEWS
    • Latest News
    • Interviews
    • Reviews
    • Commentary
    • Editorials
  • PROJECTS
    • Building Types
    • Interior Design
    • Museums & Arts Centers
    • Adaptive Reuse
    • Colleges & Universities
    • Lighting
    • Snapshot
  • HOUSES
    • Record Houses
    • House of the Month
    • Featured Houses
    • Kitchen and Bath
  • PRODUCTS
    • Material World
    • Categories
    • Award Winners
    • Case Studies
    • Partners in Design
    • Trends & Insights
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Best Architecture Schools
    • Top 300 Firms
    • Theme Issues
    • Record Houses
    • Record Products
    • Good Design Is Good Business
    • Design Vanguard
    • Historical Archive
    • Cocktail Napkin Sketch
    • Videos
  • CALL FOR ENTRIES
    • Record Houses
    • Guess the Architect Contest
    • Submit Your Work
  • CONTINUING ED
    • Architectural Technology
    • Architect Continuing Education
    • Continuing Education Center
    • Digital Academies
  • EVENTS
    • Record on the Road
    • Innovation Conference
    • Women In Architecture
    • Webinars
    • Advertising Excellence Awards
  • MORE
    • Subscribe
    • Customer Service
    • Digital Edition
    • eNewsletter
    • Interactive Spotlight
    • Store
    • Custom Content Marketing
    • Research
    • Sponsor Insights
    • eBooks
  • CONTACT
    • Advertise
Home » Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
Architecture News

Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way

In a men's bathroom at the Bass Museum, a photo of Peter Marino suggests the room's use.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
In a men's bathroom at the Bass Museum, a photo of Peter Marino suggests the room's use.

Photo © Architectural Record
Peter Marino at the Design Miami Collectors Lounge (designed by Olson Kundig) this week.
Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
Peter Marino at the Design Miami Collectors Lounge (designed by Olson Kundig) this week.
Photo © Architectural Record
A wax figure of Marino, reflected infinitely in a mirror, is displayed at Design Miami, where the architect was named the fair's first Design Visionary.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
A wax figure of Marino, reflected infinitely in a mirror, is displayed at Design Miami, where the architect was named the fair's first Design Visionary.

Photo © Architectural Record
Another exhibition, at a small museum on developer Alan Faena's property, is dedicated to Rem Koolhaas and his New York partner Shohei Shigematsu's cultural center, called the Faena Forum. The Forum w
Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
Another exhibition, at a small museum on developer Alan Faena's property, is dedicated to Rem Koolhaas and his New York partner Shohei Shigematsu's cultural center, called the Faena Forum. The Forum will join a hotel and condo complex that Faena is building on a six-acre swath of Miami Beach. The Forum will contain a concert hall connected to a black box gallery/theater.

Photo © Architectural Record
For the Faena Forum, OMA initially considered a design that resembled a fez.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
Design Miami Dispatch: Marino's Way
For the Faena Forum, OMA initially considered a design that resembled a fez.

Photo © Architectural Record
In a men's bathroom at the Bass Museum, a photo of Peter Marino suggests the room's use.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
Peter Marino at the Design Miami Collectors Lounge (designed by Olson Kundig) this week.
A wax figure of Marino, reflected infinitely in a mirror, is displayed at Design Miami, where the architect was named the fair's first Design Visionary.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
Another exhibition, at a small museum on developer Alan Faena's property, is dedicated to Rem Koolhaas and his New York partner Shohei Shigematsu's cultural center, called the Faena Forum. The Forum w
For the Faena Forum, OMA initially considered a design that resembled a fez.<div id='_mcePaste'>&#65279;&#65279;
December 5, 2014
Fred A. Bernstein
Reprints
No Comments

“I don’t like his uniform,” said a world-renowned architect, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, during a poolside conversation in Miami. “But I’m sure he doesn’t like mine either.”

Related links
    Design Miami Dispatch: Highlights From the Fair Design Miami Dispatch: The Design District

The he is Peter Marino, a prolific architect who is best known, these days, for showing up in public in full leather drag, with tattoos on his exposed arms and a Mohawk underneath his leather biker cap. Famous for designing houses for socialites, as well as stores for Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior, and other luxury brands, Marino seems to want to shock his conservative clientele with his appearance.

But people aren’t easily shocked these days, so Marino has enlisted the Bass Museum in Miami Beach in a vast vanity project, an exhibition of works by, for, and about Marino, presented in rooms that suggest dungeons presided over by a very self-important dragon (and sponsored in part by Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Dior). Setting the tone is a Gregor Hildebrandt portrait of Marino on the outside of the building; it is mounted on a black background made from unspooled videotapes of interviews with you-know-who. Not self-referential enough? Adorning one of the men’s rooms is a large photo of Marino, facing a wall, legs spread, as if relieving himself. The show is called Peter Marino: One Way. Clearly, the one way is his way.

Large galleries are devoted to portraits of Marino, including a wax-museum-style figure so lifelike that people thought the man himself was lurking in a corner. (A painting on velvet wouldn’t be out of place here.) In other rooms, artworks from Marino’s personal collection fill every inch of wallspace; the extreme crowding makes it impossible to appreciate anything but the architect’s acquisitiveness. (Terrific artists like Vik Muniz are lost in the visual cacophony.) Yet another room, its walls covered in leather, contains a series of bronze cabinets designed by Marino, reminiscent of the work of Paul Evans, but less interesting. There’s also a gallery filled with skulls, and an even larger space devoted to an opera performed, yes, in Marino’s house. One of the smallest rooms is devoted to Marino’s architecture. To fit hundreds of projects into that space, the architect and curator Jerome Sans opted for flat-screen TVs that cycle though photos of Marino buildings. 

But the problem with the show isn’t that it’s chaotic and excessive—it’s that it doesn’t do the one thing it promised to do, which is explore the relationship between Marino (who studied at Cornell and apprenticed for SOM and I.M. Pei) and his architecture. Marino’s buildings are generally innocuous, while Marino is in-your-face; the show does nothing to explain the contradiction. As the architect moved through the galleries on Wednesday with socialite clients in tow, I asked him to name the building he is proudest of. He responded, “The building I did for Samsung in Korea.” “Why,” I asked? “Because it’s marble on the outside and concrete on the inside”—smooth containing rough. Not quite a key to this complex man, but something.

Rem Koolhaas may have a big ego, but compared to Marino he is self-effacing. Koolhaas and his New York partner Shohei Shigematsu have designed a cultural center, called the Faena Forum, for a hotel and condo complex that the Argentinian developer Alan Faena is building on a six-acre swath of Miami Beach. A small museum on Faena’s property is devoted to a show about how OMA arrived at its design. To create the Forum, which will contain a concert hall connected to a black box gallery/theater, the architects looked to examples from antiquity—surprisingly for Koolhaas’s firm, there’s a strong resemblance to the Pantheon. Koolhaas and Shigematsu played with shapes and sizes (at one point, the building resembled a fez), eventually grafting the round hall onto the rectangular one, and covering the whole thing in a geometrically compelling concrete skin. Compared to OMA’s Casa da Musica in Porto, completed in 2005, the building is loose and flowing. And, despite its presence in what it essentially a sales office, the exhibition has more to say than the Marino extravaganza. Who's to say what's culture and what's commerce?



AR Subscribe

Recent Articles by Fred A. Bernstein

Miller Hull Partnership and Lord Aeck Sargent Complete Ultra-Sustainable Building at Georgia Tech

Obituary: César Pelli, 1926-2019

Architects Reflect on the Bauhaus at 100

Related Articles

Design Miami Dispatch: The Design District

Design Miami Dispatch: Temporary Architecture Against a Background of Big Building

You must login or register in order to post a comment.

Report Abusive Comment

More Videos

AR Huber Webinar 12/10


 


 

Events

December 10, 2019

New Options for Insulating and Venting Wood-Framed Sloped Roofs

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU

May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

A comprehensive overview of the control layers of a wood-framed sloped roof assembly. New code provisions will be discussed for high-performance, green and sustainable building practices. The differences between vented and unvented assembly requirements will be defined. In conclusion, a review of the emerging 2018 code provisions will be done as well as a comparison of different methods to providing continuous and integrated air, water, and thermal barrier.

December 12, 2019

Improving Building Delivery with BIM

Credits: 1 AIA LU/Elective; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 IACET CEU
May qualify for learning hours through most Canadian architectural associations

BIM brings countless advantages to the construction team, but the biggest benefit lies with the owner. For architects continuing to develop and enhance delivery methods, BIM is the solution. In this webinar with Rob Glisson, AIA, principal at ROJO Architecture, see how BIM can help you reduce risk, accelerate schedules, establish more accurate budgets, decrease costs, and better serve your clients.

View All Submit An Event

Products

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

ENR Square Foot Costbook 2020

See More Products

Tweets by @ArchRecord

Architectural Record

AR December 2019 Cover

2019 December

In the December 2019 issue, Architectural Record reveals the winners of the annual Record Products contest.

View More Subscribe
  • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Survey And Sample
    • Editorial Calendar
  • Call for Entries
  • Subscribe
    • Subscribe
    • Renew
    • Create Account
    • Change Address
    • Pay My Bill
    • Free eNewsletters
    • Customer Care
  • Advertise
    • Architectural Record
    • Advertising Awards
  • Industry Jobs

Copyright ©2019. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing