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The Accidental Empire: Marmol Radziner on Preservation, Prefab, and Fighting the Tyranny of the Nimby. Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner discuss the 36-year evolution of their design-build firm, tracing its roots in a student co-op to becoming a leader in modern residential architecture, restoration, and the urgent need for sustainable urban density in Los Angeles.
The conversation features Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner, co-founders of Marmol Radziner, detailing the firm’s history, their design philosophy, and their views on the current state of preservation and sustainability in LA.
- Origin Story and The Return to Modernism:
- The co-founders met as students at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, living in “The Ark,” a condemned co-op. This environment of free rein to alter the building foreshadowed their later design-build approach.
- They founded their firm in 1989 during the “dying days of postmodernism,” quickly committing to the modernist ideal of clarity, reduction, and the connection between design and craft (Bauhaus).
- They attribute the firm’s early success to aligning with the eventual return to California modernism, driven by its rich history in the region.
- Milestone Projects and Preservation:
- The first major flag-planting project was the Gutentag Studio (a small, pure concrete block and cedar studio), followed by the new Ward Residence.
- Their watershed moment in preservation was the Kaufmann House restoration (1993) in Palm Springs. At the time, there was virtually no industry for modern restoration, forcing the firm to develop the roadmap for approaching these aging buildings.
- They view restorations as “classrooms” that inform their new work, maintaining a healthy split of one-third restoration and two-thirds new construction.
- Preservation Today: The Fetish vs. Functionality:
- Marmol and Radziner argue they are often at odds with the preservation community because they believe historic properties must evolve to remain functional and relevant, cautioning against a “fetish” that prevents necessary change.
- They criticize the current situation where every modern building is deemed “sacred,” citing the contentious, successful fight to demolish the Barry Building on San Vicente as an example of overreach where the building’s significance did not rise to the level requiring preservation.
- The Problem of Scale (“McModerns”) and Efficiency:
- They express concern over the proliferation of “McModerns” and elephantine houses, driven by high property values and the pressure to “max out the buildable area” on a site.
- They emphasize that their modern perspective is less about style and more about the fundamental importance of connection—internal open plans and connecting the home to the landscape and exterior rhythm of nature (a concept that is lost when properties are overbuilt).
- Sustainability and the Nimby Problem:
- While California leads the country in robust, fire-resilient, and energy-efficient building codes (which have been a success), they gave the state’s housing policy an “F.”
- Leo Marmol asserted that the greenest thing the city can do is densify and allow more housing in the urban core, calling out the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality as the primary political failure that forces sprawl and long commutes.
- The Return to Prefabrication (Prefab 2.0):
- Marmol Radziner initially experimented with prefab from 2004–2012 but stopped after the 2008 crash.
- They are now returning to prefabrication—Prefab 2.0—as a response to the current “crisis of construction costs” and the need for quick, affordable, and sustainable housing solutions, particularly for fire rebuilds in Altadena and the Palisades.
- Design-Build Practice Scale:
- The firm combines Architecture, Construction Services (design-build), Landscape Architecture, and Interior Design under one roof.
- They support their construction services with their own dedicated cabinet shop and metal shop in El Segundo, allowing for control over craft and execution.
- Fire Resilience and Landscape:
- The fires are affecting landscape rules, particularly regarding Zone Zero (the 0–5 feet immediately surrounding the building). They argue against the extreme position of “no planting” in Zone Zero, believing the right, well-irrigated planting can help against embers, which they identify as the biggest culprit in mass fires, more so than direct flame.
- Home hardening (sealing every vulnerability) is considered the single most important factor, with modern energy codes being an accidental but highly effective form of fire hardening.