Ricardo Avila

With a 20-year proven track record in architecture, Ricardo has experience across multiple market sectors including Residential, Restaurants, Hospitality and Commercial. Today, his primary focus is Retail, where he uses his extensive knowledge of the local and national retail climate to lead multi-disciplinary teams to deliver impactful and sustainable projects for clients.

As Principal of the Retail Studio in Detroit, Ricardo is a driving force of innovation with a hands-on approach to client collaboration, problem solving and project management. He believes great architecture and design is a result of understanding the surrounding built environment, retail trends and consumer behavior in combination with the business objectives of the client project. Ricardo reviews all project work within the Retail Studio to achieve technical excellence, on-time delivery and financial success. His specialties include high-end retail, national grocers and mixed-use retail projects within restaurants and hospitality designed in a holistic fashion to unify the overall vision.

Ricardo is also a strong player outside of the workplace. He directs his creativity to music, playing the guitar and piano for friends and family. He believes that music is much like architecture; in order to be successful in the retail design environment, you must find a consistent tempo and balance that results in overall project success and client satisfaction.