Marmol Radziner is a design-build practice based in Los Angeles that was founded in 1989 by American architects Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner. The firm specializes in residential, commercial, hospitality, cultural, and community projects, and offers various design services, including architectural design, construction, landscape design, interior design, furniture design, jewelry design, and modern architecture restoration.
Company
Architectural Digest has described the firm as following the "master builder" tradition by operating as "a single-source shop offering everything from architectural drawings and construction documents to prefab, custom cabinetry, fixtures, and furniture". The firm's employees "work across multidisciplinary teams of architects, landscape designers, interior designers, furniture designers, and construction crews". The firm frequently designs and fabricates original furnishings specific to each project through its in-house cabinet and metal shop in El Segundo. Founded in 1989, by 1999 Los Angeles Magazine noted in the annual "Best of Los Angeles" issue that the firm was "best known for their meticulous restoration of homes by Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, and other modernist architects".
In 2005 the firm launched Marmol Radziner Prefab to address sustainable construction. Its work received design honors for both architectural and industrial design, including an International Design Excellence Award (IDEA), sponsored by BusinessWeek. By 2015, the company had five prefab designs, "for about $200 per square foot". In 2007, it was critically lauded for the restoration of Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House. In 2009, the firm debuted Marmol Radziner Jewelry, a handmade collection produced in the firm’s metal shop. Radziner's wife, Robin Cottle, who had received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts, proposed to have that department make other pieces, which the company began selling commercially, with Cottle as the lead designer.
In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter named the firm one of the 25 "most influential interior designers in L.A.", describing them as "[m]asters of creating clean, modern environments coupled with a timeless aesthetic". In 2016, the same source listed them as one of the "10 hottest architects changing L.A. real estate". The firm opened a second office in the Mission District in San Francisco in 2014, and in 2019 an office in New York City, announcing as its first project there the interior design for a new residential tower in Brooklyn Heights.
An August 2019 piece in Architectural Digest stated that the firm, "fully embodies the concept of indoor-outdoor living". In November 2019, the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm the top spot in their annual Top 50 Firms in Business list, noting its substantial revenue increase over the previous year and its high per capita revenue relative to its number of employees.
Selected work
Residential
Single-family
Co-founder Ron Radziner has described the process of designing a residence as being "like telling a story" of the family for whom the design is produced. The firm's design-build residential projects include Glencoe Residence (2002) in Venice, California; Ward Residence (2003) in Pacific Palisades; Altamira Residence (2006) in Palos Verdes; Trousdale Residence (2009) in Beverly Hills; Vienna Way Residence (2007) in Venice, California; Lilac Drive Residence (2011) in Montecito; Moreno Residence (2014) in Brentwood, Los Angeles; Mandeville Residence (2006) in Brentwood, Los Angeles; and Jackson House in Pacific Heights, San Francisco.
In 2007, the firm was called upon by Los Angeles interior designer and frequent collaborator Brad Dunning, to find a way to expand the 1950s house of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, in a way that would preserve a mountain meadow overlook. The architects designed an addition "cantilevered from the front so it wouldn't block the prized views of oaks and sycamores". In 2009, cinematographer Robert Richardson employed the firm to renovate his L.A. West Side house, set in a wooded valley and originally designed by Cliff May in 1952. Marmol Radziner was selected for their "wide experience restoring midcentury jewels", and the rebuild aimed to "soften the house" in order to complement its natural surroundings, and to "avoid distracting from the drama" of nature "by focusing attention on the house's strengths".