02 · The Studio — research, writing & commissioned work
Research first, always. We read the evidence before we write the answer, and every claim in the document you leave with can be traced to its source.
People and organizations come to the Studio with difficult questions, dense evidence, unfinished ideas, or material that needs shape. We research it, test it, synthesize it and turn it into something useful: from a pitch deck or short-form article to a report, book, or novel.
Offer 01 · Research Brief — fixed scope
A fixed-scope investigation that reviews the evidence, checks the sources and delivers a concise answer with the implications that matter.
Typical outputs
Price
Research Briefs begin at USD $1,000.
Final scope determines final price.
Offer 02 · Commissioned Research — scoped to the question
Deeper research and synthesis for work that cannot be handled as a fixed-scope brief.
Possible outputs
Price
Commissioned research typically begins at USD $4,000.
Larger reports, multi-stage engagements and ongoing research programs are scoped separately.
Case study 01 — Floating Island International
A nature-based carbon company with defensible science and no way to say it out loud.
The Question
Floating Island International builds engineered floating wetlands: a nature-based system for nutrient removal and habitat restoration, with two decades of deployments and a peer-reviewed evidence base behind it.
They were being read as a landscaping company.
The question they brought was not a writing question. It was: does the published record actually support a carbon claim a registry and an investor would both accept, and if it does, what is that claim exactly?
→ The Evidence
Two decades of deployment data, the peer-reviewed literature on constructed and floating wetlands, the registry methodologies that would govern certification, and the internal measurement record.
Nature-based carbon has an accounting problem before it has a communication problem, and the two are the same problem wearing different clothes. Permanence, additionality, leakage and measurement uncertainty are not marketing objections to be handled. They are the actual open questions in the field.
→ The Research
We started at the methodology, not at the messaging, because a narrative built on top of an unreviewed method has to be rebuilt the first time somebody technical reads it.
The published record was read and reduced to the claims that survive scrutiny, each with its source attached. The registry submission was edited at the standard the certifier applies rather than the standard a reader would forgive. Where the evidence thinned, we marked it rather than smoothing it.
→ The Judgment
The evidence supported a narrower claim than the market norm and a more confident one than the company had been making. Those two findings pull against each other in every draft, and the judgment was to publish both.
The call: state the uncertainty in the body rather than in an appendix. A carbon company that is candid about permanence in paragraph three is read as technical. The same company, candid about it in a footnote, is read as evasive — by exactly the audience it is written for.
→ The Deliverable
One claim set, six artifacts, each inheriting its claims from the one before it:
Nothing said in the op-ed that could not be traced back to a line in the registry submission.
→ The Result
The company stopped being asked what it was and started being asked how the accounting worked.
That is the whole shift, and it is worth naming precisely because it is unglamorous: the conversation moved from category confusion to technical due diligence, which is the conversation a carbon company needs to be having.
On the figures
The house does not publish a number it cannot source, including in its own commercial copy. Figures from this engagement are with the client for approval to name; until they come back, this section lists what was made rather than what it moved. The artifact list above is complete and is the part we can stand behind today.
Cases 02 and 03 are in preparation — ask and we will send them when they are cleared
From the Library — the house's own research
The house publishes essays under its own name in the Library. The Studio is the same discipline, pointed at somebody else's question. The reason the two live in one building is that the practice of writing for strangers every week is what keeps the commissioned work from drifting into the register that makes people stop reading.
Climate & Overshoot
The threshold everyone negotiates over was chosen by an economist in 1975, and it was never a physical boundary.
Systems & Power
The most consequential infrastructure decisions of the century are being taken in rooms with no press and no public.
The Material World
The same flood is a risk in one hemisphere and a fact in the other. Only one of them gets insured.
Process — four steps, no discovery theatre
You send it through Start a project. We read every inquiry ourselves and reply with whether it fits, and which of the two doors it is.
A written scope with the question stated back to you, the sources we expect to use, the deliverable, the price and the date. Nothing starts before you have it.
Evidence first, always. Where the record thins we say so in the draft rather than writing around it, because a claim that cannot be sourced comes out.
The deliverable with its sources attached, and one revision pass. If the research changed the question, the delivery says that too.
Questions — asked plainly
We research difficult questions and turn the answer into something a decision-maker can use: a brief, an evidence map, a report, a paper, an article, sometimes a book.
The difference from an agency is scope. We do not run campaigns, buy media, design logos or manage social accounts. The difference from a freelance writer is that the work starts at the evidence rather than at the brief, and every claim in the finished document can be traced to a source.
A Research Brief answers one focused question at fixed scope. You know what you are asking, and you need the evidence reviewed, the sources checked, and a clear answer with the implications that matter.
Commissioned Research is for larger questions or projects that need deeper research, synthesis and a substantial final deliverable — work that cannot be handled as a fixed-scope brief. Many clients start with a brief and commission the larger piece once the first question is answered.
Research Briefs begin at USD $1,000. Commissioned research typically begins at USD $4,000. Final scope determines final price.
Larger reports, multi-stage engagements and ongoing research programs are scoped separately. We put the anchors on the page because the alternative is a call whose only purpose is to discover that the numbers were never going to meet.
Yes. The house is bilingual and the founder writes natively in both languages, from Patagonia.
That means Spanish work is written in Spanish rather than translated into it, which matters most in exactly the places it is hardest to fake: policy language, funding applications to Latin American programmes, and anything that has to be read by a regulator.
Ricky Lanusse researches and writes Studio work, with specialist collaborators brought in by discipline when a project needs them — a glaciologist to check a claim, a carbon-methodology reviewer to read a registry submission.
Collaborators are named to the client and never used as a credential in public. If you are commissioning the Studio, the person doing the work is the person you spoke to.
Yes to both, and most of the work is under one.
Case studies on this site publish artifact types and outcomes only — never contents. Nothing is published from an engagement without written clearance, which is why the case above lists what was made rather than quoting from it.
Then that is the finding, and you get it in writing. The only thing the Studio sells is that its documents survive being checked, so a claim that cannot be sourced comes out of the draft.
In practice this comes up as a methodology conversation rather than an argument, and what remains is usually stronger for it.
A Research Brief is typically two to three weeks from the agreed scope. Commissioned research runs from about six weeks for a single substantial deliverable to three to five months for an engagement of the kind described in the case study above.
The variable is almost never the writing. It is how long it takes to get the evidence into one place.
Logbook 002 · The Translation Layer — working document
Four pages on the specific failure that puts good science in front of the wrong sentence.
It covers the three places a technical claim loses people — the abstraction step, the hedge, and the unearned superlative — and what to do at each. It is written for the person who has to explain a methodology to an investor on Tuesday and to a journalist on Wednesday, and it assumes that person already understands their own material.
There are no framework diagrams in it.
What the work can become — capabilities, not products
Nothing below is ordered on its own. These are the shapes the two offers take once the question has been answered.
Investor narratives and presentations, grant and funding cases, shareholder messaging, methodology-grade technical editing, evidence synthesis, policy language.
Thought leadership, executive positioning, op-eds, discreet ghostwriting, platform messaging.
Long-form features, science communication, editorial consulting, narrative architecture for websites and reports.
If you have a question that is worth answering properly, that is the whole job.