2025 Joseph Kyle Resume by Joseph Kyle

Joseph Kyle Selected work

Education

Joseph Kyle

Harvard Graduate School of Design | Cambridge, MA | 2020 - Present

Master of Architecture I | 3.5-Year Track

Expected Graduation 2025

Fifth Year Emerging Artist | Northfield, MN | 2018 - 2019

A yearlong artist-in-residence program at St. Olaf College focused on expanding depth and breadth of artistic portfolio and preparing for three public shows.

St. Olaf College | Northfield, MN | 2014 - 2018

BA in Studio Art with High Honors

BA in Architecture and Sustainability Studies (Independent Major) with High Honors

Work

Harvard Graduate School of Design | Cambridge, MA | 2021 - Present

Woodshop Technical Assistant | Assisted students working in the GSD Woodshop while maintaining a safe, clean and organized work environment.

Digital Media Workshop Instructor | Cambridge, MA | 2021 - Present | Led comprehensive visualization workshops for current GSD students and held office hours on a variety of digital design tools.

Teaching Assistant - PRO 7121 (Professional Practice) | Cambridge, MA | 2024 - Present | Assisted three co-instructors in day-to-day in-class operations, visiting speaker logistics and virtual speaker setup, as well as light research.

Houser Walker Architecture | Atlanta, GA | 2022-2023, Summer 2024

Architectural Intern | Led and contributed to projects of various scales, ranging from single-family homes and in-house office renovations to large-scale, multi-firm state government initiatives.

Höweler + Yoon | Boston, MA | Summer 2022

Summer Intern | Collaborated in small teams on diverse projects, including exhibition design, a single-family residence, and a design provocation for a nonprofit organization.

Arvold Landscaping

& Design Inc.

| St. Paul, MN | 2016 - 2020

Foreman | Led an experienced crew on a variety of custom residential hardscaping projects. Interpreted professional landscape designs and made on-site design decisions when necessary. Held positions of increasing responsibility including foreman over two summers and three full seasons.

Recognition Awards

Thayer Award Scholarship | Harvard GSD | 2024

Distinction | Necessary Architecture Studio | Harvard GSD | 2023

Phi Beta Kappa | St. Olaf College | 2018

Magna Cum Lauda | St. Olaf College | 2018

Ken Bonde Award for Excellence in Independent Studies | St. Olaf College | 2018

Fifth Year Emerging Artist Selection | St. Olaf College | 2018

Distinction (Studio Art) | St. Olaf College | 2018

Dean’s List | St. Olaf College | 2014 - 2018

Publications

Group work published in Utzonia: From/To Denmark With Love | Office U67 ApS | 2021

Group work nominated for publication | Construction Systems | Harvard GSD | 2021

Partnered work nominated for publication | Core I Studio | Harvard GSD | 2020

Exhibitions

Independent Study Exhibition | Harvard GSD | 2024

Mind and Body | Truckstop Gallery | 2019

Unbound | Northfield Arts Guild | 2019

Architecture of Elsewhere

A Center for Accountability at the Site of Extraction

Fall 2024

Harvard GSD - M.Arch I Thesis

Advisor - Professor Eric Howeler

Contemporary building and design practices suffer from an inherent detachment from the harmful extractive processes that sustain them. To transition away from a carbon-based economy, architecture must become an active agent in narrowing the gap between itself and these hidden externalities elsewhere. The Center for Accountability seeks to address the issue of elsewhere by offering a new model for hyper-local mine governance in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region, where several harmful copper and nickel mines await regulatory approval. What results is a regulatory facility that incentivises best practices, centers local and indigenous knowledge, and challenges the neoliberal underpinnings of contemporary extraction.

The center not only employs a Federal Land Trust model as its conceptual framework, but it architecturalizes the many regulatory and supporting bodies within it in functional and perceptual ways. Regulatory bodies shift, rotate and float around the user, who is given open access to the facility through a pedestrian circuit. Visitors may visit the Center to protest mine operations, collaborate with activists and scientists, or simply eat a meal alongside mine workers, all while bearing witness to the transforming landscape around them.

The Center’s largest components - its structure, cladding and foundation - reuse elements from the abundant shuttered mine facilities that dot its immediate site, allowing the building’s form to act as a floating datum against which the landscape might be measured.

Arrowhead Region

Advisor: Ewa Harabasz

Carbon Form Study 1 (2024)

Conte on Gesso Board

36” x 36”

Carbon Form Study 2 (2024)

Conte on Gesso Board

36” x 36”

Carbon Form Study 4 (2024)

Conte on Gesso Board

Advisor: Ewa Harabasz

36” x 36”

Federal Land Trust

Grantor

Satellite

Visiting Judge Litigants

Investors

(Under Authority of Federal Forest Service)

Trustees

Accountability

Beneﬁciaries

Tie-Breaker

Active Slab Office

Fall 2021

Harvard GSD - Core III Studio

Instructor - Professor Eric Höweler

Teaching Assistant - Rayshad Dorsey

The Active Slab Office provides a second home for the National Science Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. It seeks to better integrate the independent federal agency with the general public and local academic research communities.

In order to achieve the public-facing character that the NSF desires, the design rejects the assumed neutrality of the conventional office floor slab, a commonplace building element that stratifies users, erodes collaboration and relegates the public to the elevator lobby. The design replaces the conventional floor slab with an “active slab,” which is characterized by a series of formal disruptions - division, projection, rotation and misalignment - to resolve some of the aforementioned issues.

A central ramp system indexes the slab’s activity as it meanders through the structure and links public programming (a library, exhibition space and lecture hall) to NSF and rental offices. This “urban hike” allows the public to experience how both science and the building itself function, thus pulling back the curtain on both disciplines.

Model Study 01 - Division & Rotation (1/32)

Model Study 02 - Structural Frame (1/32”)

Mid-Review - Atrium & Inner

Model Study 03 - Program Organization

Inner Facade (1/16”)

Cable Glazing

Safety Railing

Concrete Bubble Deck

Wood Panel Drop Ceiling

HVAC (cooling)

Vertical Mullion (curtain wall)

Horizontal Mullion (curtain wall)

Double Glazing (curtain wall)

Rigid Insulation

Tension Cable Node

Tension

Tension Cable

Exterior Concrete Slab

Louver

Vertical Louver Support

Service Catwalk

Interior Light Fixture

Timber Column

Timber Beam

Spare Change Totem

Fall 2023 (Module II)

Harvard GSD - Options Studio - Necessary Architecture Instructors - Diego Grass, Shingo Masuda

Partner - David Shim (M.Arch 25’)

To truly address the needs of unhoused individuals, architects and designers must look beyond providing housing. The challenges faced by this community extend beyond shelter, encompassing both tangible needs—such as food, water, and safety—and intangible needs, including community, dignity, and visibility. The Spare Change Totem seeks to address one of these intangible needs: visibility.

In collaboration with Spare Change News, an independent Cambridge newspaper produced and distributed by the local unhoused community, we found that as readership has declined, so too has public awareness of their experiences. In response, the totem serves as a billboard, kiosk, and art piece, designed to amplify their voices and raise visibility within the community.

Standing eight feet tall and twelve feet wide, the totem disrupts pedestrian flow, contrasting with typical newspaper boxes that fade into the urban fabric. As an urban-scale structure, it reshapes space, transforming pathways into courtyards or entrances into moments of pause. The totem takes on new urban responsibilities, acting both as a backdrop and a beacon to amplify the voice of Spare Change News.

To fulfill its diverse roles, the design embraces abstraction. It does not simply represent the newspaper or act as a direct billboard; rather, it aims to intrigue, sparking curiosity and fostering engagement.

Urban Speculation

Spring 2021

Harvard GSD - Core II Studio

Instructor - Professor Sean Canty

Teaching Assistant - Brayton Gregory

This triptych documents a contemporary courtyard in Atlanta, GA and speculates on its former and future states.

The contemporary courtyard condition (figure 02) emerges from a former industrial structure adjacent to an active railroad. A built wall separates the two, while a mezzanine-level terrace connects to a pedestrian bridge.

Identifying and extrapolating upon elements of the courtyard’s found condition creates a layered narrative. In its past state, a semi-enclosed courtyard served a meat packing and processing factory at train-level. In its present state, the courtyard encloses itself and activates a second level. In its future state, the courtyard is filled by a towering urban playscape, which spreads to fill other urban voids in the surrounding landscape.

Time:

Future | Present | Former

Courtyard Condition: Filled | Closed | Open

Level:

Purpose:

Sky | Street | Train Play | Leisure | Labor

Found | Closed Courtyard | Street-Level | Leisure

Guts

2018 - 2019

St. Olaf College - Fifth Year Emerging Artist Advisor - Professor Michon Weeks

The Guts series emerged from my growing fascination with the inner-workings of heavy machinery - their pipes, gears and steel forms. While my initial interest concerned their form and structure, it evolved to include and investigate the abstract architectural spaces they create. Every alcove within a machine holds a unique set of contradictions - darkness and light, danger and safety, chaos and order. In this series, I seek to identify, sharpen and evoke these dualities.

I created this body of 17 works during my year in St. Olaf College’s Fifth Year Emerging Artist Program. Every year, Art Department faculty select four graduating studio art majors to return to campus for a fifth year of independent artistic development in this artist-in-residence program. Selected graduates share a studio and produce work for three public shows.