Marilyn Jordan Taylor.
Courtesy of Marilyn Jordan Taylor
Growing up in a small Iowa town of 1,432 people, Marilyn Jordan didn’t see a big city until she was 10 and her family moved to Washington, DC. In a 2008 article for the Pennsylvania Gazette, she recalled, “When I saw a city, I was just mesmerized. I think that the sense of opportunity that cities still offer makes them profoundly compelling places.” In DC, her father took her to see the new Dulles International Airport, and Marilyn felt a powerful connection to the building.
Marilyn was born in Montezuma, Iowa, on March 31, 1949. Her parents always thought that Marilyn would become a lawyer, her family’s profession. She studied government at Radcliffe College and graduated in 1969. But when Marilyn’s parents noticed her interest in and passion for architecture, they allowed her to change course. She received her master’s in architecture in 1974 from the University of California, Berkeley, and quickly joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in the firm’s Washington, DC, office. Eleven years later, she was made a partner and moved to New York City to head an expanded urban design and planning practice within SOM. She received a prestigious David Rockefeller Fellowship from the Partnership for New York City in 1995.
Marilyn Taylor has led Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Urban Design and Planning practice in such projects as Columbia University’s Manhattanville Master Plan, the East River Waterfront Master Plan, the reclamation of Con Ed’s East River sites for mixed-use development, the new research building at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and the new urban campus for John Jay College. She also founded and led Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s airports and transportation practice, which has become an industry leader in designing and implementing worldwide transportation facilities. Some of her airport projects in the United States include: Terminal 4 at JFK, Continental Airlines at Newark, and the expansion of Washington, DC’s Dulles International Airport—the same airport that had so inspired her as a girl. Her international airport projects include SkyCity at Hong Kong International Airport and the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, as well as the new Terminal 3 at Singapore’s Changi Airport.
Deborah Berke was the first recipient of the University of California, Berkeley (Marilyn’s alma mater), College of Environmental Design (CED) inaugural 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize, a $100,000 honor reserved for someone who has made a significant contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture and who promotes community building and sustainability. Deborah has been a professor at Yale since 1987, and her design work includes retail stores, offices, private residences, and remodels of older buildings. In praising Deborah, Marilyn Taylor said, “Deborah Berke is an extraordinary architect, whose works are singularly evocative and successful. Throughout her career she has been teacher and practitioner, using each talent to strengthen the other. CED will enjoy her remarkable presence as both role model and provocative. She’ll be great as the first architect selected in this wonderful new appointment.”
Through her work, Marilyn has shaped the landscape of New York. Excited by cities, in a 2009 article for Penn Current, a University of Pennsylvania newspaper, she said:
I loved working on Wall Street with the incredible energy of the markets, the history of Trinity Church and the harbor 270 degrees around. I love living on Washington Square Park. The park is so strong, especially when the trees are out, that the cacophony of buildings all around blends it into a great urban place. I like the small-scale streets of the Society Hill neighborhood, the extraordinary housing stock of Philadelphia—which you find in Capitol Hill in Washington, as well. I love standing at the base of the US Capitol, which I did for the first time when John Kennedy was being sworn in, and being inspired.
Her passion for building around the world is far-reaching. She has said:
I’m incredibly proud of the new Changi Airport that SOM did for Singapore, which is one of the most extraordinary examples of the commitment of a government to investment in infrastructure. I love the markets—I was just in the souk [shopping area] in Marrakesh, Morocco. I love the entrepreneurial spirit. I love any place where the tourists are outnumbered by the locals, but still it’s so unique and authentic that tourists come without overrunning it. I love the genuine places that people make.
In 2001, Marilyn became SOM’s first female chairman. She was appointed chair of the Urban Land Institute in 2005, the first woman and the first architect to head the prestigious research organization. In 2007, Crain’s New York Business named her one of the “Most Powerful Women in New York.”
“I’m not really interested in being a ‘starchi-tect.’ My hope is to be an effective advocate for making the city a better place for everyone.”
Marilyn’s late husband, Brainerd Taylor, was an urban planner. Their two children are following in their footsteps; her son is going to architecture school, and her daughter has an urban studies degree. When Marilyn wants to get out of the city for a rest, she heads to her log cabin in New Hampshire. She feels that she is a very lucky person because she’s never had to sit at a desk. She’s always been able to travel, and works with intelligent and principled people.
Marilyn told Crain’s, “I’m not really interested in being a ‘starchitect.’ My hope is to be an effective advocate for making the city a better place for everyone.” Marilyn explained, “Cities offer so much—a sense of mobility, economic, social, and physical. That makes them so compelling.”
Marilyn and recent graduates from High Speed Rail Studio, meeting with Vice President Joe Biden in 2012 to talk about their proposal for a national high-speed rail network for the Northeast Corridor.
Courtesy of MarilynJordan Taylor
In May 2008, Marilyn became the dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, though she is still a consulting partner with SOM, where she focuses on mentoring. Marilyn is leading the next generation of architects and designers. She focuses not just on the buildings but on their impact on the environment, society, and the economy. She takes a big-picture view, considering issues such as energy and climate change as they relate to her work.
In 2013, Penn’s School of Design created new courses to allow students to help redesign infrastructure and discover new ways to build and restructure cities in response to the ever-changing environment, such as working to create more sustainable cities in response to Hurricane Sandy. Marilyn helped implement the program and taught one of the courses, which focused on restructuring of the tunnels under Penn Station, which were shut down for several days in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as the tunnels were flooded. Marilyn, with her vast experiences in the contemporary professional design world and focus on cities, sustainable communities and infrastructure investment, is helping to educate the architects of our future.
Dean Marilyn Jordan Taylor with recent master’s of city and regional planning graduates Boris Lipkin (left) and Matthew Rao from her High Speed Rail studio, co-taught with architect Robert Yaro.
Courtesy of Jamie Diamond, MFA ’08/PennDesign