We enhance the human
experience and environment
through distinctive design.

Founded in 1983, Mahan Rykiel Associates is a 35 person landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm with an office in Baltimore Maryland. The firm works to imagine harmonious connections between people, environments, and each other. Research and discovery guide project development that range from public parks, civic plazas, state infrastructure, downtown and neighborhood plans, academic institutions, corporate campuses, mixeduse housing, private residences, healthcare facilities, hotels, and commercial centers. The firm cultivates this diversity to deepen and broaden its creative capacity to shape the built environment. Active collaboration across disciplines and sectors ensures that technical knowledge and resources are leveraged in support of each project.

MRA is a certified DBE/WBE firm. 

Mahan Rykiel Associates’ philosophy centers on the core pursuit of design – to construct meaning and build relationships in the world. The firm seeks to realize this in every project as it articulates ideas in matter through design. This act is born and reborn at every site, with every client and every collaborator. Research, dialogue, and discovery enable the real to be shaped by imagination – giving form to the invisible and substance to the intangible.

Our approach starts with you, understanding your motivations, vision and desired outcomes for your project. 35 years designing highly successful places has taught us that good design stems from an acute ability to listen to our clients. Every project, regardless of size or complexity, begins with communication, so that we understand your needs, exploration, so that we can fill out your vision, and confirmation, to assure that our solutions align with your goals. Deep, informed thinking and a method that creates lasting partnerships with our clients are not additional services.

Our process is structured by Mahan Rykiel Associates’ Collaborative Design Research (CDR) method. This provides a structured framework for design and planning that is efficient, pragmatic, and purposeful. Throughout the CDR process, MRA works with its clients and stakeholders to align values, program requirements, performance metrics (ecological, economic, and cultural), and budgets to create inspired plans and landscape strategies that celebrate each project’s unique identity. The flexibility of the CDR method makes it an essential tool for the firm; providing clients a vehicle to establish a basis for mutual expectations and project evaluation, regardless of scale or complexity.