Design and Resistance With Martin Rickles Studio at the Atlanta Art Fair

Architect and interior designer Jennifer Martin and urban designer and landscape architect Carley Rickles are both native Atlantans. Martin studied at Georgia State and Georgia Tech, and Rickles at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, but rather than decamp for more established design cities, like many of their peers who went to New York or Los Angeles after graduating, they chose to stay and become part of a community of people working within their home context. Both ceramicists, they met at Side Clay Studio in 2019. Rickles briefly joined architecture firm Square Feet Studio where Martin had been working for several years, but in 2020, amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, they struck out on their own, establishing Martin Rickles Studio, a practice that combines architecture, interiors, and landscape design.

"Architects have screwed up so much stuff," says Martin. "When I look at the way that a lot of architecture interacts with its site, with its context, with its cultural context, all these things, I can see us doing projects that are more integrated by comparison." Their rooted approach has come through in everything from residential architecture to adaptive reuse and historic preservation work. Now, a small studio of three, they’ve collaborated with historians, design researchers, archaeologists, and artists on various projects.

"A lot of the people whose work we’ve included on the theater stage are people who are self-taught or who have branched out from other fields, and they’ve taught each other."

—Jennifer Martin

For the stage at the 2025 Atlanta Art Fair (which runs September 25-28) they’ve foregrounded what they call an idea of resistance that they say is at the center of the design community in the city—a push back against the top-down development that has long defined Georgia’s capital. Dwell spoke with them about what exactly that means and how it informs their own practice.

What were some of your early projects?

Martin: We had a couple residential interior renovations and landscape designs, one being the La Croix House. The client had a backyard with really poor soil conditions and challenging grading. All the water was kind of flowing into her guest house. We developed a design that allowed us to control it through rain gardens and reused concrete that we had demoed, an aesthetic of reuse. Atlanta's a city that's used to rebuilding itself, literally. So, I think the idea of material history is beauty here. 

"Architects have screwed up so much stuff." 

—Jennifer Martin

Why the La Croix House?

Martin: The client is a friend, and years ago she was in this social club that was about sparkling water, just how much they love sparkling water. Exuberant is the best way to describe the project. La Croix cans are beautiful, and we used those colors on the interior. The floor patterns are her cat’s face.

And the public projects?

Martin: We were able to secure a cultural adaptive reuse and landscape project, the historic Bruce Street School. The Bruce Street School was the first public school for Black children in DeKalb and Fulton County during segregation. In the 1930s the community bought the land, and it was built using stone that they quarried locally. The school closed in the 1950s during "separate but equal," and the building has been deteriorating ever since.

Rickles: And it was fenced off from the community. We did the conceptual design and early community engagement for turning the structure into an accessible cultural space.

How did you interpret that history into a design?

Rickles: Within the ruins we created a design that effectively provided some nourishment, like garden space, outdoor space, an amphitheater, classrooms, and exhibition space within the ruins. The history hadn't been recorded in an official capacity, and so we started by collecting oral histories. We did all these ethnography events, where we had a lot of question-and-answer activities. And from that work, we pulled out three different themes, quotes from the community that people said over repeatedly: Welcoming and relaxing, active learning, and remembering and honoring. 

Martin: We designed a structure, a skeleton to stabilize the ruins, and then also to serve as an interpretive space, a ghost of the scale of the previous form. We don’t really have any updates on the execution. But it was a big deal for our firm to get that project early on.

How does the theater space at the fair relate to the bigger picture in Atlanta design?

Martin: Being from Atlanta and from the Southeast, I think both of us came together feeling like we wanted to make a practice that would encourage people to stay in the city. And I want this place to be a place that draws the best talent.