A tribute to Tom Marvel and BFI board members Jonathan and Lucilla Marvel – multi-generational vision and inspiration.

A tribute to Tom Marvel and BFI board members Jonathan and Lucilla Marvel was recently given by the Times here. 

 

When he was growing up in San Juan, P.R., Jonathan Marvel would often visit his father’s architecture studio, awe-struck by the work around him. Schools, churches, hotels, apartment buildings, plazas and boulevards — seemingly all the things of daily life had come from the pen of his father, Thomas Marvel, one of the most prolific designers of his generation on the island.

 

After studying architecture at Harvard, the senior Mr. Marvel went to work for Buckminster Fuller, who was the uncle of his wife, Lucilla, and then Nelson A. Rockefeller, whose International Basic Economy Corporation sent him in 1959 to develop affordable housing, first in Iran, then in Puerto Rico. When his three-month assignment in Puerto Rico was over, he decided to make it a permanent one.