That the close relationship between art and fashion is increasingly reflected in the built environment is no surprise, given that luxury fashion brands regularly collaborate with award-winning architects to create unique retail spaces to display their goods. New York-based architect Peter Marino has been so complicit in the convergence of innovative high-end design and the retail industry that his extensive body of work, which includes projects for Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Chanel, represents a great shift in architectural hierarchy.

It’s a big call to make for someone who essentially designs shops, but in the past few decades luxury retail stores have become secular temples to good design and consumerism, places of worship for fashion’s followers and must-see sites for tourists. As architecture critic Taro Igarashi explains: “Traditional structures such as temples, churches and palaces were the principal typologies since the dawn of civilization.”

In the 21^st century, however, some of the biggest international architectural projects have involved the construction of retail spaces, in part thanks to fashion companies’ private and independent funds that allow them the fiscal freedom to make a controversial design statement that will become important creative capital for the brand. Retail forms less than half of Mr Marino’s architectural business, which employs close to 200 people, but it’s certainly what he has become known for since redesigning department store Barneys in 1985. That and his Village People leather get-up and Mohican hairdo.

What Mr Marino did at Barneys was nothing short revolutionary, creating individual boutiques – or concessions or shop-in-shops, as they’re now known – for the brands it carried. Peter’s design played into the global expansion and branding that was underway in the fashion business at the time, and also made him a name with those individual brands for later work.

Today, the standalone boutiques of Louis Vuitton are perhaps what Mr Marino is most known for, in part due to the brand’s sheer prestige and visibility in the global market. Mr Marino’s brilliance in designing for Louis Vuitton is his incorporation of the label’s innovative multimedia branding operations, which in a single store can include animation and video displays, temporary art installations and semi-permanent exhibitions. The development of digital manufacturing technology over the past fifteen years has made possible the incorporation of figuration and ornamentation into the structure at the inception of the building’s design. Given that Louis Vuitton has been using its signature damier pattern since the 1870s to mark its goods as authentic, it makes sense that all encompassing branding should be so intrinsic to the house’s architectural productions as well, with its logo and damier pattern embossed on the walls.

Mr Marino has become known for his ability to hone in on a brand’s history and identity – important when designing for heritage houses – and communicate this in a unique way. The architect’s recent redesign of the Chanel boutique on Sydney’s Castlereagh Street is designed almost exclusively in black, white and glass, evoking the brand’s famed perfume bottles, while furniture is covered in luxurious tweed, like its twin-set jackets.

As these brands know, an architecturally innovative retail store not only gives the fashion items offered for sale a perceived value akin to that of fine art displayed in a museum, but also becomes part of the brand’s own identity, reinforcing the sense of artistic authenticity customers crave.

On show now as part of Art Basel is One Way: Peter Marino, an exhibition exploring the architect’s relationship with art, given that his work exists at the intersection between it, design, fashion and visual culture. Curated by Jerome Sans, the exhibition showcases some of Mr Marino’s personal collection of contemporary art as well as new commissioned work by Gregor Hildebrandt, Guy Limone and Erwin Wurm.

One Way: Peter Marino is on display at Bass Museum until 03 May 2015.