Testimonials

Marilyn and the Runcible Studios team are a pleasure to work with. They bring creative energy, ingenious problem solving, and attention to detail that exceeds expectations. Their team understands how multi-family buildings are put together and how the spaces should function. Marilyn is very adept at managing a project's budget and timeline, and is a forthright communicator who is able to deliver on her promises. Beyond the mechanics of design and project management, the Runcible team excels at imagining and crafting buildings that have a unique spirit and identity. 

I can’t imagine taking on another renovation project without Marilyn and the rest of the team at Runcible Studios. From the beginning, Marilyn took time to ensure we were comfortable with every step of the process and guided us in every decision that we had to make. She took time to get to know us and our tastes so that her recommendations were always on point. Her management of the project and rapport with the construction team ensured everything was done on time and with quality. When issues came up, she took time to explain the situation to us and provided us with clear options on how to proceed. Her involvement through the project from design through completion helped make it as successful as it possible could have been. We couldn’t be happier with the way our house came out!

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.

Marilyn and her team helped us through every step of the renovation of our two-family home in Somerville: designing, selecting a contractor, drafting construction documents, and managing the build. They created a flow that fits our lifestyle, pairing our desire for open space with a connection to the outdoors with functional areas to support two people working from home. We’re happy, it was easy to find a tenant excited about the rental unit, and we know this space will be our home for many years to come. Thank you Runcible Studios!”

One of the unanticipated benefits of having worked with Marilyn is that she really helped us to define what our overall values and priorities are in relation to living and being home. Marilyn got us to consider deeper questions than ever anticipated and it was always a joy to follow her design process. Marilyn is wonderfully knowledgeable, thorough and organized and no stone gets left unturned when it comes to the options she presented. She is full of enthusiasm and expertise and my husband and I could not have been more pleased with the work she did for us. I feel like Marilyn joined our family in meaningful ways.

I've worked with the team at Runcible across multiple renovations on my home in Cambridge and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Marilyn and team invested the time to deeply understand my objectives, concerns, lifestyle, and aesthetic – this design process yielded a highly functional and modern layout that feels natural in a 100+ year old home. Beyond the drawings, what really set Runcible apart was the spirit of partnership that I felt throughout each stage of the project. Throughout the ups and downs, I knew that I had a trustworthy, reliable, and insightful advisor that I could depend on. The house looks absolutely incredible, and I couldn’t have done it without Runcible!

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”