Jonathan Marvel was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He majored in fine arts at Dartmouth College and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1982. In 1986, he graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design with a Master of Architecture degree. Jonathan worked for four years in the office of Richard Meier on the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona, the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the High Museum in Atlanta before beginning his own practice in 1990. He won the competition for renovating the galleries and entry of El Museo del Barrio in 1992, the same year he teamed up with Rob Rogers to form Rogers Marvel Architects in New York City.

Jonathan has taught design studios for fifteen years at Columbia, Harvard and now Parsons and recently taught an Urban Design Studio at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a former Board member of the New York Chapter of the AIA and currently serves on the preservation committee of the Municipal Art Society and on the streetscape committee for the New York City Design Commission. He has been a member of the NYSCA Architecture, Planning and Design panel since 2006. Jonathan is active on three boards, The Greenwich Village High School, a start-up interdisciplinary school in Manhattan, as well as the Buckminster Fuller Institute and the Van Alen Institute.