Byron Kuth and Elizabeth Ranieri began their partnership after earning degrees in architecture and fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. They established Kuth/Ranieri Architects in 1990. Their innovative projects integrate client needs with contemporary issues of design, technology, and environmental awareness. The firm works at the forefront of green building, committed to putting standard practices aside in favor of research and experimentation. They established Deep Green Design Alliance (DGDA) in 2006 as a think tank to further the study of sustainable industries and community empowerment.

The firm's projects span a broad range of scales, from installations and buildings that explore tactile and visceral experiences of environments to architectural and urban design proposals that investigate more universal problems of building, culture, and global environments. Central to the diversity of projects is an amplification of craft in the artifact, with an intention to arrive at open-ended propositions that favor a performative approach over a formal one. The firm's research and deployment of materials, components, and systems reflects an effort to precisely measure things that are often indeterminate or unknown. Through unveiling latent aspects inherent in each investigation, site, or program and lodged within strategies of sustainability, Kuth/Ranieri pursues a provocative and expressive environmental architecture.

Both principals have taught at CCA, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and as Freidman Professors at UC Berkeley. The firm has exhibited widely and won several national, state, and regional awards, including the Architectural League’s Young Architects and Emerging Voices awards and I.D. magazine’s annual award.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. The Architecture Lecture Series is funded by McCall Design Group; Pfau Long Architecture; Jensen Architects; ARCH Drafting and Art Supplies; GCI Inc.; Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Inc.; Perkins+Will; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP; and SRG Partnership.