Experience

Founder, Richard Jones, launched iO Studio in January 2020, after serving as President and Director of Design at the Baltimore based landscape architecture firm, Mahan Rykiel Associates. It was during his time there that he began to explore the processes which drive design, with the goal of better understanding the myriad mechanisms and pool of actors which make projects possible.

That curiosity and the knowledge brought forth (the funding avenues, partnerships, and strategies developed to make projects real) serve as a grounding tether at iO Studio, where the first questions asked are not what a design wants to be, but rather, how a design will be realized. And more importantly, not, ‘for who we design this particular project?’, but rather, ‘ how do we bring a project like this to a community that needs it, but might not have the capacity or ability to realize it?.’

The following projects are a sample of the work Jones led over his 16 years at Mahan Rykiel Associates.