PETER MARINO

I don't talk about myself in the third person. When I start doing that, you'll know I'm having an out-of-body experience.

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

My parents spent a lot of money so I wouldn't sound like I came from Queens. I went to speech class.

I don't sell anything. So, I have a personal image, but I think that's because I'm from an art background, and I'm an artist, and I think most artists do have personal images. I consider myself more in that category of the way an artist had a look.

I work 12 hours a day, seven days a week - and I love it. I'm creative. I feel fulfilled. I'm from a solidly lower-middle-class background; I'm not from the world that I'm in now. So I appreciate it a lot. I've really got a rich, full life.

I do really modern with materials that are so luxurious that they're, like, baroque.

We have a thousand hydrangea plants bordering the house, and they were all supposed to be pink, but a handful of them keep turning purple.

Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.

I have this 'Alice in Wonderland' idea in my head that a garden should be a place of wonderment.

People in Shanghai make a lot more money than the farmers in the rice paddies. The rice-paddy farmers are not buying Louis Vuitton bags, but the upwardly mobile ones in Shanghai, who are all working in Wall Street-type firms, are infinitely better-dressed than people in the West. Their women take this fashion thing seriously.

I believe that women would crawl across broken glass to get a cool pair of shoes.

The French use gardens to show grandeur and the English to show how things have endured for hundreds of years, but for me, they're all about fantasy.

I got into architecture via fine arts, and I was a sculptor myself, and I have always involved artists in my projects. When I say 'involved,' I mean I always bring artists in at the beginning projects before they're built and say, 'Will you do a room? Will you do a sculpture floating in mid-air? Will you make a chimney? Will you do something?'

Creating work for the time that one lives in means no retro thinking. It can and hopefully does mean timelessness.

If something's a high-margin product, I understand its importance to the store.

Publicity doesn't really get me anything. Clients are not going to hire me for a $100 million building because I have a brand. They really want the product.

In 1991, if someone came in with a $1 million budget for a boutique, I would have fainted. Nobody spent even half that. But now, the bar has risen very high.

My father's house was on East 55th Street on 1st and 2nd Avenues. I'm fifth-generation Marino in the East 50s - I live on 57th Street. I can't be more East 50s.

Anytime I see an unusual combination of colors or patterns or texture, I buy it.

I've benefited enormously from an arts education and a music education in New York. When they cut the programs for funding, I was devastated.

Ginza! Where I've done two Chanel towers and Louis Vuitton and Dior stores. I just feel at home there.

Design-wise, I look at everything. If I don't personally design it, I'll review it. I'm kind of creative director of the firm.

I want to be the first person to animate bags - everything done for handbags bores me to tears - I want to make it more playful.

If you want to come up with a really original design idea, and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

All bronzes are made to be touched. Bronze is a sensual 'living' material. The sweat and oil of your palms adds to the patination.