Ron Radziner, FAIA, wanted to get back to basics. The principal at Los Angeles design-build firm Marmol-Radzniner had recently finished designing a jewelry store whose collection of men’s pieces encrusted with diamonds and emblazoned in silver finishes were a challenge for him to identify with. “I like the weight of men’s jewelry,” he says. “But I felt there had to be a way to do it in a more elemental [manner].”
So Radziner crafted a bronze cuff in his firm’s metal shop, which is regularly used to make custom hardware for projects. His colleagues’ enthusiastic response inspired him and partner Leo Marmol, FAIA, to launch the company’s eponymous line in 2010. The collection now includes rings, cuffs, bracelets, and pendants, which are sold wholesale, online, and in a handful of domestic and international boutiques.
Inadvertently, the collection’s industrial composition and natural patina mimic the partners’ architectural aesthetic, which tends to proportion the massing of structural forms with their materiality. “It’s what we like,” Radziner says. “It’s not too different, in some strange ways, but it’s not conscious either.”
