our impact
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Atlanta, Lithonia, Stonecrest, Decatur, & Chattahoochee Hills, GA; Chattanooga, TN; Opeleika & Auburn AL; and Los Angeles, CA
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MRS has applied our interdisciplinary skillset (landscape architecture, architecture, interior design, and urban design) toward a number of project types, including:
Hospitality projects, including restaurants, retreats, and event space
Land planning for ecotourism, mixed-use, and med-high density projects
Cultural heritage and adaptive reuse for significant historic sites and structures
Private residential additions, renovations, interior design, and ecological landscape designs
Significant community design and storytelling projects
Civic and institutional projects
Social and criminal justice projects for women and children
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MRS has had the opportunity to work with a number of ambitious clients and collaborators. In our 4 years we’ve worked with the Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance, Fulton County Arts, DeKalb County, Talecia Tucker, City of Lithonia, Poolsprite, Amy Landesberg Art and Design, Iman Person, Anh-ton Tran, Chattahoochee Queen, Office of Brothers, Stability Engineering, Shear Structural, B-10, InBloom, Nourish Botanica, Bromstad Printing, Unclaimed Combinations, David Naugle, Belco Electrical, Fulton County Juvenile Justice Center, Villa Albertine, Silt Studio, Scott Morris, New South Associates, Proficient Engineering, Whitespace Gallery, Recess Concepts, Jennifer Bonner/MALL, Future Perfect, Afterglow Tattoo, Shades of Green Permaculture, Invest Atlanta, Happily Dressed, Dessa Lohrey, One Most, Redeeming Grace Ministries, Cross-Miller, Dogpile Carpentry, Morgan Oliver School, Gwendolyn and Isaac Cohen, a number of Private Clients, and so many more folks.
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Awards
X-Houses (MALL/ Jennifer Bonner) Urbanize write up featuring MRS
In 2023/4 MRS was anonymously nominated by members of our community for 2 prestigious national awards.
MRS received a National ASLA Honor Award in Communications in 2023. We were recognized for our community engagement at the Historic Bruce Street School. Client: Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance
In 2023 Carley received another National ASLA Honor Award in Analysis and Planning as a Faculty Advisor to Brooke Freeman. This project was a part of Carley’s BLA Captone studio at UGA CED. The project was a Downtown Masterplan for Montezuma, GA. Client: Montezuma Downtown Development Authority
One of our first completed projects, the LA Croix House, received an AIA GA Merit Award for Residential Under $1 Million in 2023. Client: Private Homeowner
Press
This Whimsical Atlanta Home was Inspired by La Croix Cans (Clever / Architectural Digest)
Fulton County Announces Groundbreaking of its ‘Courtyard of Second Chances’
Conceptual design for DeKalb County’s historic first Black public school to be unveiled in September
Another community engagement session scheduled for Bruce Street ruins
The Shape of Things to Come (Landscape Architecture Magazine)
Historic Bruce Street School Preservation Moving Forward (AMNHA)
Lean-to ADU for LADBS Approved Standard Plans (with Jennifer Bonner/MALL)
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We stay busy. Outside of MRS Jennifer and Carley are active participants in their local and professional communities. Here are some ways we’ve been engaging:
We’ve served on 2 thesis committees, including a SCAD Master of Architecture student, and a UGA Master of Historic Preservation student.
MRS has participated in at least a dozen student reviews at UGA, GT, KSU, and AU in their landscape architecture, and architecture programs.
Carley has taught part-time at UGA’s CED since 2022. She teaches landscape architecture studios to BLAs. and MLAs.
We actively mentor designers in the early stages of their career. Many of these individuals have reached out via email or instagram. We believe in making time for the next generation of architects and landscape architects.
In 2023 we began an internship program we hope to continue each year. We were blown away by the number of applicants interested. It was especially meaningful to see that many applicants were women, BIPOC, and/or LGBTQ+. We plan to continue building a practice that feels welcoming to the most under-represented in our fields. According to a recent ASLA study 7% of landscape architects identify as non-white and about 30% are women. AIA reported in 2023 that 17% of AIA enrolled architects identify as belonging to a minority racial and or ethnic group. Despite enrollment being above 50% for women in education, only 26% of female architects are enrolled with AIA.
Every year we provide pro bono services to small minority owned businesses, individuals, or organizations in need of design services. This work has included rezoning, space planning and programming, presentations, neighborhood meetings, design, and budgeting.
Experimentation is an important part of our practice. We engage with our local arts community to share our experimentation publicly. In 2021 we attended the Hambidge Center for a 2 week residency. In 2023 we exhibited our work at Whitespace Gallery in Shedspace. We have an exhibition scheduled for early 2025 at Weslyan College in Macon, GA.
Last year Carley participated in the Atlanta Design Festival by hosting a workshop that was included in the festival’s exhibition and speaker series. This work was in collaboration with Hannah Palmer, UGA CED, and Villa Albertine.
Carley has maintained an art and research practice for over a decade. Her projects interrogate themes related to everyday life and the built environment through field research, documentation, scholarship, exhibition, and social practice. For more visit her website.
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Maybe I’m just asking you to pay closer attention to the land.
– Maya Lin, Boundaries
Founded by Jennifer Martin and Carley Rickles in 2020, Martin Rickles Studio (MRS) is an interdisciplinary design studio located in Atlanta, GA. Despite their differing fields of study, Rickles and Martin formed their partnership out of a shared love for land art, patterns, ceramics, landscapes, vistas, trees, chairs, windows, steps, slopes, leaves, draperies, grasses, rooms, and paths.
MRS works in and between the fields of urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, and interior design (with an occasional foray into graphic design and who-knows-what). Beyond their parallel interests, MRS finds common ground in a working process which is sensitive, rooted in science, inspired by theory, and responsive to the shifting needs of a warming environment, clients, society, and self.
MRS places a high value on process to guide each project’s development, and uses a combination of informative and generative approaches, such as: field research, precedent research, interviews, drawing, collage, model-making (digital and physical), discussion, debate, material studies, mock-ups and prototypes. In addition to their reliance on process, MRS believes no matter the scope of a design project, it should be well-considered through every lens of its context (past, present, man-made, natural, cultural) and considered for its future impacts.
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During the formative days of MRS, we were collectively experiencing the early stages of the COVD-19 pandemic; the waning of Donald Trump's first presidential term; the killing of Rayshard Brooks in our home city of Atlanta; severe and pervasive natural disasters; and increasingly egregious income disparity. It was a time of upheaval, pain, fear, and collective resistance against the status quo. This was our genesis.
As we began to process the events of this time, the impetus for our studio began to reveal itself: MRS should be a holistic and process-oriented place of vulnerability and open collaboration. We sought and shared resources for our common reflection and growth, with an aim to holistically and authentically integrate these resources into the DNA of our studio practice. We believed that the interdisciplinary nature of our practice would also illuminate alternative ways of working and perhaps help us raise expectations for how to collectively approach the built environment in Atlanta and the Southeast (mainly in substance, potentially in style). We would also continue to be inspired by and participate in Atlanta’s ground-up creative culture.
In 2021 MRS was awarded a two-week artist residency at The Hambidge Center in North Georgia. The thesis of our proposal was to research and develop an unconventional interdisciplinary and place-based approach to our work which would be responsive to environmental and social needs. Our proposal was inspired, in part, by landscape architecture researchers Karen Lutsky and Sean Burkholder’s essay, Curious Methods. Lutsky and Bunkholder describe an alternative approach to studying space which is based in an "open-ended, ground-level exploration." They argue that relying on methods for proving “glorifies a finite ‘truth’ and shuts down the process of inquiry by which knowledge grows deeper and changes over time."
The results of those early inquiries and explorations are now evident and evolving in our working process, project evolutions, and new project inquiries. In 2023, we completed Phase 1 of a courtyard renovation at the Judge Romae T. Powell Juvenile Justice Center in Atlanta. The renovation utilized both Trauma Informed Design and ecological design principles, and was lovingly named “The Courtyard of Second Chances” by one of the court administrators. The name was inspired by the choice to re-integrate every piece of demolished concrete into new bench seating and pavers– a subliminal message of hope and inspiration for the families, children, and court staff who utilize the courtyard.
Our big-picture goal of providing a “place to land” for ourselves, clients, and collaborators has been met with overwhelming support by our greater Atlanta community, with current projects expanding into Alabama and Tennessee. As it turns out, there is very much a need for a paradigm-shifting, female-led, Southeast-based, interdisciplinary design studio. So many of our clients and collaborators have said as much, and we have taken their words to heart.
our identity
We’ve reflected, observed, and summarized. This is who we are.
our process
We pride ourselves in our ability to adjust. Each project has a unique client, community, environment, and goal.
Aside are some examples of how we’ve approached several different prompts.
