RO/LU was a studio based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul that works on art and design-related projects. Founded in 2003 as a landscape office by Matt Olson and Mike Brady, an “open practice” was adopted in 2005. Though they continued to actively work with landscape architecture, their production evolved over the years to include sculptural furniture, performance, clothing, writing, video, and more.

The studio believed their work emerged through motion and they stayed as active as possible by accepting projects across a broad spectrum of budget and scale--from a small backyard for a young artist couple to a large-scale residency in a museum. The gentle, open parameters that guided them were inspired by the ideas of composer John Cage, the anti-specialization position of Buckminster Fuller, the sprawling approach to work of the Eames Office along with the genuine joy experienced through curiosity and love.

In the early years, the studio was inspired by the democratic approach and optimism present in the first waves of modern design and wanted to provide access to serious thinking about the spaces we live in, to people whose smaller budgets have, in recent eras, excluded them. It all connected through the studio founders' past involvement with DIY culture via punk/indie rock, its zines, and inclusive attitude, which valued experience and action over money and status. These early motivations are still very present in RO/LU's attitude and they continue to focus on expanding instead of narrowing... "I mean, what would anything be, without everything else?".

RO/LU began releasing conceptually driven furniture pieces in 2010 through Mondo Cane Gallery in New York, Volume Gallery in Chicago and also showed their work internationally. They were the 2012 Open Field Artists in Residence at the Walker Art Center and Matt Olson completed a month-long Robert Rauschenberg Residency in 2013. They were featured in the PIN-UP Interviews book and have been covered in the New York Times, The WSJ Magazine, Wallpaper, Surface, and other press outlets. Their work lives in many esteemed private collections and the Permanent Collection of the Walker Art Center.