Martin Rickles Studio (MRS) is an interdisciplinary design studio that practices architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, interior design, and research. MRS has experience working across a range of disciplines, scales, and project types, believing in the unique potential of each project to generate a meaningful and lasting solution. The team uses a combination of informative and generative approaches, including field and precedent research, interviews, drawings, collages, model-making (digital and physical), discussion, debate, material studies, mock-ups, and prototypes. MRS was founded by Carley Rickles, PLA, and architect Jennifer Martin in the spring of 2020. Despite their differing fields of study, the two find common ground in a working process that is sensitive, rooted in science, inspired by theory, and responsive to the shifting needs of a warming environment, clients, and society. They believe no matter the scope of a design project, it should be well-considered through every lens of its context and considered for its future impacts.


Courtyard of Second Chances; Atlanta, GA

MRS was commissioned by Fulton County Arts to develop a trauma-informed design for the courtyard at the Judge Romae T. Powell Juvenile Justice Center, also known as the Fulton County Juvenile Court. The Courtyard of Second Chances, which is the only external space in the secure facility, is a unique melding ground where court staff, judges, court attendees, and their families gather to dine, attend youth-centered programming and events, and pass time during sessions. The project was inspired by MRS's design concept to break up and re-use existing concrete as a closed-loop hardscape system of pavers and gravel.

 


Historic Bruce Street School; Lithonia, GA

Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance is working in partnership with MRS to shepherd the legacy of the Bruce Street School into a twenty-first century context. The ruins of the school mark the location of the first public school for African American students in DeKalb County, established in 1938. After the students were relocated in the 1950s, the old building caught fire, leaving the stone walls exposed for the next six decades. Community engagement led to a final concept design featuring an edible and shaded garden with seating and paths, a reforested yard, accessible paths into and through the ruins, a small open-air amphitheater, a memory garden with interpretive exhibits, and restrooms.




John's Forest; Atlanta, GA

John's Forest is a private residential landscape design project in the Edgewood neighborhood of Atlanta. Formerly an eroded turf grass hillside, this environmentally contributing landscape was created using the principles of ecological design while balancing the client's desire for a high-end, luxurious landscape made to entertain. Ecological Elements include 100% pervious surfaces, biodiverse and predominantly native plants, bird feeders, pollinator plants, sustainable black locust hardwood, low-maintenance and drought-tolerant plants, slope stabilization, and soil treatments. Entertainment elements include a custom bar and Argentine grill, plantings with year-round interest, a custom-designed sustainable lumber table and bench set, lighting, several outdoor rooms for dining, lounging, games, and a firepit.




Lean-to ADU; Los Angeles, CA

The Lean-to ADU was commissioned by the city of Los Angeles for their Pre-Approved ADU Standard Plan. Design elements such as the horizontal lines of vines and planting bed forms nod to California landscape architecture heroine, Ruth Shellhorn, FASLA (1909-2006), whose use of carpet bedding at Disneyland is possibly one of the first displays of pop culture in landscape. Though carpet bedding conventionally uses annuals, which is an unsustainable practice, MRS proposes using the same idea but with low-maintenance, xeric plants that are adapted to the California climate. These plants will attract pollinators, have varying flowering colors and times, be drought tolerant, and filter stormwater runoff.

As seen in LASN magazine, October 2025.