But it’s never been quite like this: Marino has become the No. Marino has been an architect for a long time-ever since he graduated from Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in 1971. Or, as he puts it, “I fucking do everything!” It can feel, at times, like Marino designs everything. None had budgets under $5 million, and only ten had budgets under $10 million. Marino’s firm, which has a staff of 150, completed 100 projects in 2011. He’s just signed with the Shinsegae corporation, which means both commercial and residential projects for the majority shareholding family. And then there is the work he does on the private homes of Bernard Arnault, various members of a Middle Eastern royal family, and other members of the international superrich, like the English jeweler Laurence Graff, who has hired Marino to design a whole new kind of chalet on a hillside near Gstaad. ![]() In addition to the enormous Vuitton openings, there have been new boutiques for Chanel, Céline, and Zegna, among others. In the past twelve months, Marino has been far more awake than anything else. “I’ll go on four hours a night for a while and then I’ll come home and be asleep for 72 hours straight.” “I’m like a sleep-hibernation camel, dude,” Marino says. After Beirut comes Shanghai, where he’ll attend the opening of the company’s largest store ever-the largest store he’s ever designed. After his ride, he’ll go straight to Paris for the opening of the Louis Vuitton boutique he’s just redesigned, and then he’ll go to Beirut to check in on a luxury-condominium and hotel complex he’s been working on for the past year and a half. Sometimes, when he is riding, he plays Wagner’s entire “Ring” cycle through in his head. He is looking forward to this break for the chance to stare, for hours on end, at a white line on a black highway. “This is my summer leather,” he says and raises his bare, tattooed arms to the sky, showing a thick strip of muscly midriff. He is wearing a sleeveless leather top that is open on the sides except for three straps secured by shiny silver buckles, a pair of low-rise leather pants that lace up the backside, a snug leather codpiece, and leather motorcycle boots that cause him to walk with his legs open in a V, just like in the pictures. He is 62 years old and has a trim, jet-black Mohawk and goatee. “Live to ride and ride to live, dude!” Marino says. ![]() The next morning Marino will leave for a ten-day motorcycle trip across the American West. By the reception desk, there is a Han Dynasty horse carved from an enormous block of sandy stone, and there is one wall of Warhol lithographs in bright, saturated colors-and there has also been delivery of a gleaming new KTM motorcycle. There are also several massive black-and-white photographs of the principal of the firm, Marino himself, standing always with legs slightly apart and a black leather policeman’s cap pulled over his eyes, looking like a cross between a Hells Angel and Karl Lagerfeld. When the Elevators open onto the 36th floor at Peter Marino Architect, the first things visible are multiple Damien Hirst dot paintings and a stainless-steel skull with bullets for teeth by Joel Morrison.
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