Darwin Studio is a multi-pronged design house focusing on collaborative creative ventures that span from interior design to experiential event design to large scale art installations. Darwin was founded in 2015 by Susan Retterbush, a spatial designer and photographer who splits her time between New York City and Paris. She graduated from the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati, attended Columbia University for photography, and is currently enrolled at the Beaux-Arts de Paris for painting.
Susan has dedicated her 18 year professional career to meticulously crafting immersive experiences. She spent a decade as the head of design at award-winning experiential marketing agency, MKG, in New York City. She led 2D and 3D design for a wide range of leading brands across the luxury, fashion, auto, food and beverage, and tech markets. A long standing partnership with Google and the Whitney Museum of American Art remain personal highlights. Following agency-life, Susan worked independently, expanding her resume to include set design for music and television, as well as partnering with Refinery29 to bring to life 29Rooms before transitioning to Color Factory in 2018. During her tenure as Chief Design Officer, Susan played a substantial role in ushering Color Factory from a singular pop-up exhibition to an established thought-leader within the interactive museum industry with 3 permanent locations, featuring over 80,000 sqft of uniquely conceived and designed interactive art exhibitions. Under Susan’s creative and design leadership, Color Factory was voted Best Immersive Art Experience by USA Today in 2024 and 2025.
Taking her multi-disciplined skill sets crafted within the experiential marketing and immersive art industries, Susan founded Darwin Studio in pursuit of further artistic gain and a more consistently creative lifestyle.