Marilyn Jordan Taylor is an architect and urban designer whose projects focus on various aspects of the public realm. She joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1971 and was elected Partner in 1987. Her first several years in the firm were spent in the Washington, DC office, where she participated a number of urban design and planning projects, including Hilton Head Island, the Great Mall of Washington, DC., Main Street Spartanburg, Montgomery Community college, and the Center Cities Study of Joint Development at Transit Stations.

   From 1978 to 1985 Ms. Taylor served as SOM’s director of design for the Stations Program of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, a $250 million Federally-funded investments to this system, the project placed historic landmark stations on the National Register and served as a catalyst for state, local, and private investments in station areas. The project has received numerous design, planning, and construction awards.

   In 1985 Ms. Taylor moved to New York to lead an expanded urban Design and Planning practice within SOM. In this role , she has been involved in the preparation of plans for Columbus Center, Riverside South, East River Landing, Worldwide Plaza and Tribeca Bridge, Route 9A. Transitional Housing for the Homeless , Columbia University East Campus, Pratt Institute, Chase Metro Tech, South Ferry, and north end residential development in Battery Park City. Her projects beyond New York City range from Providence Capitol Center in Rhode Island, Celebration New Town in Florida, the University of West Florida, Boston Fan Pier, and the New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts, to the Yongtai New Town in China, Canary Wharf in London and Sentul Raya in Kuala Lumpur.

   Since 1985 Ms. Taylor has lead a number of airport and transportation projects, culminating in the establishment of SOM’s Airports Group. Her current projects include: the expansion of Dulles International Airport, Washington, DC; Logan International Airport, Boston; The International Arrivals Building at JFK New York; and the Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel. These current projects have a combined investment of over $1.5 million. Her other transportation projects include a New York Transit subway station, a ferry terminal for New York Water Ways, and the Northeast Corridor rail station that will link to the Newark International Airport people mover. She also lead the team which produced the award winning Transit friendly Land Use Planning, a manual for citizen and municipal officials throughout New Jersey.

   Ms. Taylor is very active in civic activities in New York. She serves on the boards of the Environmental Simulation Laboratory at the New School, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for American Architecture at Columbia University, the New York Building Congress, and the Institute for Urban Design. She is the immediate Past President of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, its oldest and largest chapter; during her tenure, she initiated the George S. Lewis Public Policy discussions and re-energized the chapter’s involvement in civic issues. She also chaired the AIA’s national Regional and Urban Design Committee. In 1995 she was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the New York City Partnership, spending a year in studying the city’s public policy issues and strategies.

   Ms. Taylor was educated at Radcliffe College, M.I.T, and the University of California at Berkeley. She is married to Brainerd O. Taylor, a transportation planner and urban designer, and has two children, Brainerd, 16 and Alexis, 13.

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