Carol's Bio

Carol spent her early career at Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates and at Swanke Hayden Connell and Partners. She founded her own boutique architectural firm, Carol Maryan Architects, in 1983. Located in Manhattan, projects span the United States. Clients include private individuals, corporations, developers, creative services firms, and public entities. The award-winning CMA team includes architects, interior designers and technical, and construction professionals.

The Kids’ Digs division of CMA focuses on the particular requirements of a child’s living space and was created, in part, as an expression of the practical challenges Carol herself experienced in trying to create an inviting and child-appealing room, in the limited space of a New York apartment. She understands how a living space needs to evolve as a child grows. Designing kids’ rooms is still one of Carol’s great joys, despite her son having just graduated from college.

What clients say:

Carol possesses the remarkable ability to balance a highly refined aesthetic approach with a deep understanding of the livability of a space. The fusion of pragmatism and design yielded a renovation that was strikingly beautiful yet served all of our needs.

Carol never pushes a design on a client. She gets it from the client. She brings to every project, every relationship, sensitivity and flexibility, taste and knowledge. But it’s how she listens, and what she hears, that makes her a great friend and a great architect.

Carol is extraordinarily perceptive envisioning what clients want. Not only because she listens carefully to what they say. She hears what people feel, what they think. She’s beyond comparison in terms of her ability to visualize space and get clients to see what she sees as she combines form and function to create spaces that are aesthetically pleasing and useful.

Carol’s work has been featured and published throughout her career.

Highlights include:

• Traditional Home – Thoroughly Modern Woman and Their Classic Homes – Town House – Tell me a Story – October, 2004
• Country Home – Make It Personal, Country’s New Attitude, Better off Red – April 2004
• Better Homes and Gardens Decorating – Big Apple, Little Bite – May/June 2003
• Better Homes and Gardens New Home Decorating Book – A Little Bite of the Big Apple – Meredith Corp. – 2003
• Wall Street Journal – Kid’s Home Office Space – December 4, 1998
• Child Magazine – Built In Solutions – November, 1997
• Designer Show House –partnered with Simons’s Hardware – design bathroom - Spring, 1997
• Child Magazine – Little Kids Big Messes – September, 1996
• Child Magazine – A Room of My Own – August, 1996
• Child Magazine – Two in One Room, November, 1993
• Daily News – Article about Kids’ Digs – October 11, 1993
• Better Homes and Gardens – Putting it in Perspective, August, 2003
• New York Magazine Best Bets – Design of Purdy Optical for kids – June 7,1993
• Sesame Street Parent Guide – Rooms To Grow In – March, 1992
• Child Magazine – Grand Prize Winner – Kidspace – October, 1991
• New York Times – Real Estate Postings, January 24, 1988
• Home Magazine – Kitchen Ideas – 1985

Awards:

Carol was the winner of the 1977 Indiana statewide competition to design and build the Architectural Center for the Indiana Society of Architects. She was also one of the first runner ups in the competition for the design of the Viet Nam Memorial, built in Washington D.C. in 1982.