RVTR is an award-winning design research practice based in the Great Lakes Megaregion of North America. Working across scales, from product and building design to the visualization and planning of evolving ecosystems and economies, RTVR applies complex systems thinking with a mandate to examine, explore and anticipate the effects of our constructed environment. We are equally engaged in the advancement of technology transfer and the transformation of social and institutional organizations.

In order to approach these large and multifaceted issues, RVTR operates simultaneously as a professional architecture practice and as a university-based research practice. Since the inception of the practice in 2007, its three directors – Geoffrey Thün, Kathy Velikov and Colin Ripley – have worked to blur boundaries between these two aspects of design practice. Our studio environments in Ann Arbor MI and Toronto ON operate as experimental think tanks - horizontally organized to engage the full breadth of our team’s thinking in each facet of project development. RVTR also regularly collaborates with a broad team of academic, scientific and industry partners enabling a deep and informed approach to integrated design.

RVTR has received numerous awards including a Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Award of Excellence for Innovation in The Practice of Architecture (2011) and an R&D Award from Architecture Magazine (2010). The work has been exhibited publicly in Canada, the United States, and Europe, and widely published. In 2009, RVTR was the recipient of the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture from the Canada Council for the Arts.