Sometimes when you just work with little firms, you don’t know what the F you’re doing. MARINO: SOM was influential in that I learned how an architect’s office needs to be professionally organized. Were any of those firms deeply influential? Or were they a means to an end? They were looking for architects who could speak French and actually produce drawings in French. JOHNSON: And they needed somebody who could translate? Pei-I tease people by saying I got hired not because I had any talent, but because I spoke French. I said, “Philip, I’m on my own, dude.” I was lucky enough to work for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, George Nelson, and I.M. He wanted me to join the firm as a baby partner. JOHNSON: This was in the late ’70s? Was he doing lunch at the Four Seasons every day? I couldn’t imagine an architect having enough money for offices in the Seagram building. Philip was so nice because he offered me a job. MARINO: So Philip Johnson bought four of Warhol’s portraits of his mother, and he was like, “Before I sign the check, Andy, I want to see that you’re paying the contractor.” And so he paid, and all’s well that ends well. Of course Andy did his typical, “Well, if you buy a painting, I’ll be able to pay.” I’m giving you a couple of tips, Rashid, on what to do here. It was embarrassing, because I had used a contractor that was recommended to me by Philip Johnson, and he got really annoyed with Warhol. MARINO: When I finished the Warhol job, there were extras on the contract that Andy felt he shouldn’t pay. All those people became clients because of him. He hosted everyone from the Agnellis, to the Rothschilds, to Pierre Bergé and Saint Laurent. But it was Fred Hughes’s job to get portrait commissions for Andy, so he entertained the world. Designing his house didn’t do me any good because nobody saw it. When he moved into the posh new East 66th Street house, he was morbidly private. The reason Andy moved was that his mom had died and it creeped him out. But luckily, after designing Andy’s house, Fred Hughes bought his old one on Lexington Ave. JOHNSON: Was it an actual business? Were you incorporated? I opened my business with Warhol as my first client, and I was like, “If I don’t make it, I’m going to leave architecture.” I got a business permit from the city of New York and opened my studio, which meant I put one drafting board on my dining table and the other over my bathtub and toilet-lived in a studio. There was a huge oil crisis in the Middle East, and architecture firms were devastated. He said, “Peter, do you want to do it?” I said to myself, it’s now or never. MARINO: I got lucky when Andy Warhol bought his townhouse on East 66th Street. JOHNSON: I’m going to take us back to 1978. I ended up spending a ton of money building it out. You’re just going to have to wing it and see how it goes. PETER MARINO: Where are you? How do I know I’m talking to the real Rashid? To learn more about Marino’s legacy, his friend, the conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, called him up to discuss Andy Warhol, architecture, and American icons. Imagined as a “kind of theater in which many different plays could unfold,” the luxury storefront pays tribute to the house’s past, while becoming a contemporary museum of its own. Built in 1865, the hôtel particulier has been anointed with the Marino touch, and boasts artworks from legends such as Isa Genzken, as well as several living gardens designed with the late, great Monsieur Dior in mind. Nowhere is this more obvious than in his latest feat, the stunning reimagining of Dior’s historic Avenue Montaigne flagship store in Paris. Marino is an avid collector of everything from cookie jars to contemporary art-a practice that positions him as both a historian of consumerism and an advocate for conservation across all his endeavors. Peter Marino is known for constructing some of the most iconic storefronts across the globe, but the 72-year-old architect’s tastes venture beyond high fashion houses and custom leather.
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