Bojána Bányász and Donatella Cusmá are practicing architects who are contributing to the man-made environment as much by drawing and building as by photographing, stitching, teaching, cooking and curating. They collaborate in the firm, Claret-Cup and are licensed to provide architectural services in California and in Italy.
Although from different corners of Europe, our paths crossed in Los Angeles, a city that we both fell in love with at different times for different reasons. Our collaboration in Claret-Cup is strongly defined by this connection to the city.
What do architects do? is a question that – if asked earnestly – most of us are dying to answer. The cliché of an architect is a multi-talented cameleon: at once a bespectacled nerd in front of a computer, a white-haired professional sketching designs on a paper-napkin, a suit with a hard-hat knit-picking a detail at a construction site, and a wine-glass holding fashionista at a dinner party chatting with celebrities. But an architect, simply put, is someone who cannot help seeing how things could be, and half-way knows how to make those things happen. The other half depends on communication and collaboration.
As architects and project managers on a variety of building projects for over a decade in Los Angeles, and in collaboration on community-based and teaching projects since 2008, we take on and conceive of projects with a potential to create or affect a physical, experiential environment.
Expanding the bounds of what might be called an architectural practice, we seek zones of experimentation where architecture is personal, emotional and appropriate. Claret-Cup is an attempt at finding opportunities for design by considering alternatives to the usual job description of the architect as simply a procurer of fine edifices.