We love working with the folks building and shaping our cities and communities.

Building housing is one of the most important things we can do in society – and here at Runcible, our hats are off to the folks who make it happen in creative, visionary, sustainable, and innovative ways. We love collaborating with developers who seek to unlock the highest potential of sites, and who prioritize community, design, place-making, and quality construction.

We are strong believers in finding the value “hidden in plain sight” – and we mean value for developers, tenants, and community members alike. We’re here for your tough approvals processes, tricky zoning requirements, and those times when you really need to do something special. We understand that we’re here to work collaboratively with developers and other consultants to put together a vision that also pencils out, and we’ll be thinking of both the bottom line *and* the aesthetics, about both construction feasibility *and* neighbor concerns, and about both zoning/code *and* the design intangibles that make a project great.

We’ve been working on multifamily housing for nearly 15 years – at our previous firms, and here at Runcible as “pinch hitters” and collaborators with other firms in the Boston and Philadelphia area, and on our own as well. We’re delighted to bring a sensible, visionary, pragmatic, and design-forward approach to developers who are changing the skylines of our cities for the better.

Is Our Consulting Service right for you?
You've got your proforma sorted out, but you need the perspective of a team who knows design and construction to help fill in the gaps
You've got an Architect, but need a second set of eyes on your floorplans to maximize value

You're new to development, and need someone you can bounce ideas, questions, etc off of on an as-needed basis
Or maybe you're looking for architectural services?
You're in need of someone to do a zoning and feasibility analysis on a particular parcel

You're looking for someone to get you through initial entitlements, neighborhood procesess/presentations

You're in need of an Architect for your project, who can take you and a team of engineers and consultants through the design, documentation, and construction process for your building

Ready to take the next steps?

Let's talk!
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Development Projects We Work On

Looking for some help, but not full architectural services?

Explore Our Services

Not sure what’s possible on your parcel? Looking for some more firepower to unlock the potential of your project and your site? We’ve done countless feasibility studies for developers in some of the trickiest jurisdictions there are, and we love digging into a parcel and figuring out how to max it out. This isn’t a quick back of the envelope – experienced developers can do that themselves – this is us helping discerning developers taking things from a passing grade to a stellar standout, maximizing FAR, net to gross, and buildable SF in the process.

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Ready to do the whole project? We are too! We’ve taken development projects from A-Z, and we can do the same for you, with dedicated teams of consultants, an “eyes on the prize” approach, and a relentless pursuit of a great building that works well for both developer and community.

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Need to expand your team temporarily? We’ve done a bunch of projects as the “utility player” – we can leap off the bench and supplement your team on a multifamily project, filling out your ranks and helping extend your reach – we’ve done it many times, on projects in the Boston and Philadelphia area. Let us know how we can help you!

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Featured Work

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Multifamily Residential

Gilman Square Mixed Use

Utilizing creative, zoning-driven massing and deep neighborhood involvement to create a bold statement for Somerville’s future What if we could design a truly mixed-use building that sensitively considers the local neighborhood at a newly minted transit hub, while setting an...

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Multifamily Residential

26 West Broadway

The transit-oriented 26 West Broadway is a 46,000 square foot mixed-use development in a radically transforming South Boston neighborhood. The six-story building is highly visible from the West Broadway Bridge and the Southeast Expressway. The project contains 4,000 square feet...

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Consulting

Multifamily Floorplan Consulting

Looking for some help with your floorplans, either for your personal residence or your multifamily development? Learn more on our “Services” page! We don’t have a lot to show here, because our work is mostly confidential with our clients, but...

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Multifamily Residential

First and First Townhomes

Fitting 22 new townhomes on an irregularly shaped city lot First+First is a development of 22 new single-family row houses build on a site on the boundary between traditional South Boston and the industrial waterfront. Each house has a garage...

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What our Clients Say

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“Marilyn’s design chops are easy to see just by looking at her work. But if I had to highlight what makes working with Marilyn as a developer such a pleasure, I’d point to two things: First, Marilyn knows construction. When..."

“Marilyn’s design chops are easy to see just by looking at her work. But if I had to highlight what makes working with Marilyn as a developer such a pleasure, I’d point to two things:

First, Marilyn knows construction. When making constructability decisions or comparing building systems, you can rely on Marilyn to provide both a designer’s and builder’s perspective on the challenge at hand. I could always count on her for a creative solution or (even better) a couple of options.

Second, Marilyn’s ability to push the team is rare. I’ve worked with many architects, and Marilyn is second to none in her proactiveness and control of the huge variety of parallel deliverables a complex project demands.”

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Jason Cincotta Owner, Cincotta Co.
As a construction company, we’ve worked with many architects over the years and Marilyn and her firm, Runcible Studios is second to none. Her depth of knowledge, eye for design and knack for problem solving are outstanding. Runcible Studios is..."

As a construction company, we’ve worked with many architects over the years and Marilyn and her firm, Runcible Studios is second to none. Her depth of knowledge, eye for design and knack for problem solving are outstanding. Runcible Studios is always responsive and a pleasure to work with. Marilyn achieves giving clients what they want - even if they are not entirely sure in the beginning - look effortless. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Marilyn and her firm for many years to come.

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Ralph Khirallah Owner, RK Construction
Working with Marilyn is a dream. Her visit to our home was one of the most illuminating conversations my wife and I have ever had when it comes to how we think about our home and our strategy for investing..."

Working with Marilyn is a dream. Her visit to our home was one of the most illuminating conversations my wife and I have ever had when it comes to how we think about our home and our strategy for investing in improvements over time and within our budget. Marilyn is patient and wise and brings an extremely high level of construction, real estate, and architectural knowledge. She's able to envision design opportunities that we, after living in our space for years, could not. She asks questions we wouldn't know to ask ourselves and she truly listens. She's a fantastic design partner and on top of all this, is one of the kindest people I know.

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Caleb Dean Medford, MA
“Runcible Studios led the design and construction management effort for a structurally challenging gut renovation in Bay Village. Marilyn’s strengths lie in her ability to foresee problem areas and provide strategic guidance that helped me make informed decisions and communicate..."

“Runcible Studios led the design and construction management effort for a structurally challenging gut renovation in Bay Village.

Marilyn’s strengths lie in her ability to foresee problem areas and provide strategic guidance that helped me make informed decisions and communicate effectively with the contractors and engineers. She is timely when responding to questions and pragmatic when issues arose.”

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Michael Winston Partner, FWD Partners
We had a great experience working with Marilyn. We started with some pretty vague requirements and a very broad sense of what types of design we liked. Marilyn did an amazing job of going from this to a really exciting..."

We had a great experience working with Marilyn. We started with some pretty vague requirements and a very broad sense of what types of design we liked. Marilyn did an amazing job of going from this to a really exciting proposal that was beyond what we thought was possible and yet fit our budget and needs as a growing family. From that initial meeting to the completion of the project there wasn’t a detail that she wasn’t willing to jump in and figure out from helping figure out fixtures to dealing with the city for permits, working with the contractors, troubleshooting the inevitable curveballs that come up when construction starts, to thinking about how to arrange the rooms once the place was finished. Any big project will require hundreds of small but important decisions from paint color to light fixtures to bathroom mirrors. Marilyn took the time to understand our design preferences and presented us with a few options, saving us an inordinate amount of time and stress (and helped us avoid making some bad design decisions). We’re still overjoyed by how transformational the project was and feel so happy to get to live in such a functional and beautiful space.

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Private Client Cambridge, MA

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