Joseph Kyle Portfolio

Joseph Kyle

Selected work

Bio

Joseph Kyle

jkyle@gsd.harvard.edu | (651) 434-3264

I am a designer with a multidisciplinary perspective informed by my background in studio art and landscape construction.

Education

Harvard Graduate School of Design | Cambridge, MA | 2020 - Present Master of Architecture I | 3.5-Year Track Expected Graduation 2024

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.

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.

Studio 7 | Minneapolis, MN | 2018 - 2019 Assistant Art Instructor | Provided 1-on-1 instruction to students ages 7 - 18 in a variety of art media including oil and acrylic painting, ceramic sculpture and relief printmaking in an atelier studio environment. Assisted in design and construction of an annual student show and the completion of day-to-day administrative tasks.

Recognition

Awards 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 Mind and Body | Truckstop Gallery | 2019 Unbound | Northfield Arts Guild | 2019 Senior Art Show | St. Olaf College | 2018 Cage Gallery Solo Exhibition | St. Olaf College | 2017

Abilities

Digital

Physical

Social

Rhino Vray Revit (beginner) Adobe Illustrator Adobe InDesign Adobe Photoshop

Masonry Carpentry Water management Horticulture Model-making Hand-drawing

Client Communication Leadership Public speaking Meeting tight deadlines Working with a team Working remotely

Active Slab Office | Fall 2021

06 - 25

Unbox Cinema | Spring 2021

26 - 45

Urban Speculation | Spring 2021

46 - 49

TENET Film Shed | Spring 2021

50 - 67

Nostalgia Case Study | Fall 2021

68 - 71

Artist Residence | Fall 2020

72 - 89

Flood Series | Spring 2017

90 - 91

Senior Series | Spring 2018

92 - 95

Guts | 2018 - 2019

96 - 103

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.

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2D Collage 01

2D Collage 02

2D Collage Studies - Initial collage studies provided a foundation on which the project would grow. In them, the slab assumes an active role – guiding and articulating the public-private interface at an urban, building and intimate scale.

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2D Collage 03

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2.5D Collage 01

2.5D Collage Studies - As these collages moved from 2D to 2.5D, they developed a vocabulary of formal moves with which the active slab could fame the relationship between the NSF and the visiting public. This vocabulary included: division, projection, rotation and misalignment.

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2.5D Collage 02

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Model Study 01 - Division & Rotation

Model Study 02 - Structural Frame

Model Studies - Model studies investigated the potential of each “active slab” quality - division, projection, rotation and misalignment - to spatially redefine the NSF’s relationship to its public visitors.

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Model Study 03 - Program Organization

Model Study 04 - Atrium & Inner Facade

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Plan 01

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Division - The relationship between the NSF and the public is curated through the division of the normative floorplate. The resulting center atrium establishes visual and auditory connectivness between both halves and remains continuous throughout the structure despite changing public programming.

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Plan 02

Plan 03

Projection - Periodically, one half of the divided slab will bridge the atrium and disrupt the adjacent slab, both sectionally and in plan. These slab projections occur at key programmatic interfaces between the public and the NSF, creating a type of “third space” that negotiates between the two.

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Misalignment - By dividing each floorplate into two halves, each half has the freedom to shift up or down to best suit its programmatic responsibilities. These misalignments are indexed on the building’s facade in moments of relief - where the exterior curtain wall and louver system rise to produce a recessed terrace for both the public and office to enjoy.

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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 Cable Glazing

Tension Cable Safety Railing Exterior Concrete Slab

Louver

Vertical Louver Support

Service Catwalk Interior Light Fixture

Timber Column

Timber Beam

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Plan 05

Plan 06

Rotation - Program elements are distinguished sectionally by intermittent rotations corresponding to changing public program. These rotations create four distinguishable stacked tiers, which the circulation ramp registers with a helix.

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Circulation - If the facade indexes the active slab to the urban context, then the building’s circulation scheme – a long, meandering ramp – reflects it within. The active slab’s projections, divisions, rotations and misalignments affect the ramp’s route, often redirecting visitors along new and unexpected paths through various programs.

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Circulation Redirected Through Library

Helix Indexes Slab Rotation

Lecture Hall

Exhibition Gallery

NSF Office & Shading Louvers

Facade Relief

Seminar Rooms & Lecture Hall

Library & Projected Reading Room

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Unbox Cinema Spring 2021 Harvard GSD - Core II Studio Instructor - Professor Sean Canty Teaching Assistant - Brayton Gregory

The Unbox Cinema reinterprets the inward-facing black box theater typology as it seeks to address the demands of a bustling public site. A mixture of conventional and unconventional theaters create the cinema’s mass, while a public forum and private event space occupy the space in-between and above, respectively. These programs function interdependently to create a dynamic interior space ideal for community-building.

The Unbox Cinema adopts a box-within-rotated-box formal language to organize its massing and program as well as its structural and roof systems. Semi-transparent screens separate spatial types while functioning as projection screens themselves. What results is a public forum where visitors can both watch and become part of the motion picture.

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01 - Extract

A - Conventional

02 - Divide

B - Gallery

03 - Rotate

C - Outdoor

04 - Shape

D - Standing

Geometric Rational (01 - 04) - The Unbox Cinema disrupts the black box typology. Four black boxes are placed within a semi-transparent screen. They rotate, enlarge, shrink and shift to better suit a variety of film-watching conditions.

Theater Typologies (A - D) - The Unbox Cinema hosts four different film-viewing conditions with varied degrees of public access, each located within a different transformed box.

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Site Condition - The Unbox Cinema is located on the Northernmost edge of the TENET film lot. Its edge condition anticipates a public promenade along the water’s edge that links future mixed use development to the film lot’s campus path.

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Public Persona - The Unbox Cinema’s unique position on a harbor front, adjacent to a busy film lot and inevitable future development means it must adopt a public persona through both engaging with street and harbor levels.

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Negative Massing

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Positive Massing

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Plan 01

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Plan 03

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Roof Geometry - The Unbox Cinema’s roof geometry is derived from four pinwheeled conoids emanating from the interior rotated box. As each conoid clips the facade, it indexes the program beneath.

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Public Forum / Interior Theater - The Unbox Theater’s peripheral wedge conditions and programatically ambiguous core operate as a public forum for the dynamic site. The interplay between public activity, light and semi-translucent screens create an interior theater, casting the public as characters in their own projected drama.

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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: Courtyard Condition: Level: Purpose: 46

Future | Present | Former Filled | Closed | Open Sky | Street | Train Play | Leisure | Labor

Future | Filled Courtyard | Sky-Level | Play 47

Found | Closed Courtyard | Street-Level | Leisure 48

Former | Open Courtyard | Train-Level | Labor 49

TENET Film Shed Spring 2021 Harvard GSD - Core II Studio Instructor - Professor Sean Canty Teaching Assistant - Brayton Gregory

The TENET Film Shed occupies an industrial site on Boston harbor and provides ideal filming conditions for Christopher Nolan’s 2020 psychological thriller, TENET. The project uses the architectural scale to reevaluate several of the film’s concepts relating to linear and inverted time.

Hosting three sound-stages and their associated programming, the shed also serves the specific needs of a high-functioning film studio environment - both specific to TENET but flexible for later productions.

The TENET Film Shed employs geometric inversion, varied ground planes and choreographed materials to organize program and index multiple time scales.

In conjunction with the individual shed’s development was a group effort to organize five film sheds into a coherent urban strategy. Certain strategies were coordinated among all five group members - Eno Chen, Angie Lopex-Videla, Yunzi Shi, Taichi Wi and me.

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Varied Ground Planes - The TENET Film Shed employs multiple ground planes throughout its structure, each which reflects a different attitude towards the adjacent rising sea of Boston Harbor. The largest floodable sound-stage sits 16 feet below grade; One small sound-stage sits at grade, while the other small sound stage and remaining program sit four feet above grade. The frequency of flooding affects how each stage weathers over time, increasing their suitability for different filming needs and indexing time itself.

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Storm Surge Year 2100

High-Tide Year 2021

Low-Tide Year 2021

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Film Shed Campus - A Series of speculative studies were conducted after the conclusion of the TENET Film Shed Project. They reinterpret the campus strategy designed by Eno Chen, Angie Lopez-Videla, Yunzi Shi, Taichi Wi and me through the addition of varied ground planes that index sea level rise. Pictured are three sea-level states, each creating unique conditions for filming, living and working within the film lot master-plan.

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Plan 01

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Original Geometry

Large Sound-stage

Inverted Geometry

Small Sound-stage (x2)

Combined Geometry

Supporting Program

Geometric Inversion - The process of geometric inversion, whereby a normative geometry is flipped inside-out around an inversion circle is used to rationalize the film shed’s overall massing strategy.

Program Organization - Geometric inversion dictates the TENET Film Shed’s program organization. A residual courtyard fills the shed’s center, hosting flexible programming and binging daylight into the shed’s core.

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Plan 03

Circulation - A central nave services most of the film shed’s program, while a secondary transept offers a direct route to the large sound-stage and central courtyard. Program increases in privacy with each ascending floor.

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Large Sound Stage

Sound-Stages - While many scenes in TENET require no water, the largest sound-stage remains floodable, providing the durable infrastructure, sound isolation and physical protection required for many of the film’s action scenes. The two smaller sound-stages offer a network of mezzanines - useful for rigging, construction and unconventional camera views.

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Small Sound Stage

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Material Pallet - The TENET Film Shed’s material pallet of timber, copper and concrete functions to index multiple scales of time. Each material transforms at a different rate, thus providing a layered index of time.

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Nostalgia Case Study Fall 2021 Harvard GSD - Construction Systems Instructor - Professor Yasmin Vobis Partners - Catherine Chen, Maggie Musante Nominated for GSD Loab Library archives and publication

This project represents a group investigation into the architectural manifestations of nostalgia. In an effort to understand how contemporary projects might frame this complicated subject, Catherine Chen, Maggie Musante and I focused our attention on Grand Parc Bordeau, a social housing renovation by Lacaton & Vassal.

Completed in 2017, Grand Parc attaches vertically-stacked winter gardens to existing 60s-era housing blocks to expand their footprint and promote communal interaction among residents. The project reflects a nostalgia for the communal living conditions that characterized pre-war working class French society as well as a desire to revitalize the original mission of post-war social housing.

With a particular attention paid to the renovation’s enfilade, system tectonics and assembly, this group project sought to understand how systems of construction can reflect the deeper cultural attitudes of their designers and users.

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Artist Residence Fall 2020 Harvard GSD - Core I Studio Instructor - Dr. Lisa Haber-Thomson Teaching Assistant - Jacqueline Wong Partner - Nana Komoriya Nominated for GSD Loab Library archives and publication

The Artist Residence spans two existing triple-decker houses in Somerville, MA and serves three distinct programs - housing, art exhibiting and art-making. The residence investigates the “rear deck” (common to the triple-decker housing type) as a projective tool for negotiating between new and existing architectural space.

The Artist Residence interrogates three fundamental aspects of the Somerville “rear deck” - the changing seasons, vertical circulation and privileged positions of viewership. What results from this interrogation is a sequence of discrete ascending deck spaces that both connect and distinguish the project’s three programs, while also exploring how plant life and enclosure both index and disguise New England’s changing seasonality.

The Artist Residence was a collaborative effort between Nana Komoriya and me. Both of us contributed to most aspects of the design, however Nana is primarily responsible for the final plans and sections, while I took a greater role in the project diagrams and elevations. Renders were shared equally.

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Open

Transparent

Mesh

Opaque

Deck Enclosure - Residents of Somerville retrofit their rear decks according to their desired level of separation from seasonal conditions.

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Photographing 200 sq. ft.

Minimal Daylight

Sleeping (4) 120 - 200 sq. ft.

East Facing

Studying (4) 100 sq. ft.

North Facing

Painting 300 sq. ft.

North Facing

Art Display 3000 sq. ft.

North Facing

Sculpting 300 sq. ft.

North Facing

Room-Type - Each program within the Artist Residence is arranged according to its programmatic use. Room types are designed according to their specific needs relating to ceiling height, light quality, and aperture orientation.

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Deck Enclosure - The Artist Residence mimics the enclosure gradient typical of the Somerville triple-decker through its treatment of six separate deck spaces. Their level of enclosure determines the extent to which interior activities correspond to exterior seasonal conditions.

Pictured - Deck 1 Winter Condition 79

Deck 1

Deck 2 & 3

Circulation - A vertical circulation route connects, yet distinguishes the project’s three programs by way of intermediary deck spaces, which attach to the circulation stair and lead visitors through increasingly private spaces with varying conditions of enclosure. Decks function as places for rest, transition and establishing privacy.

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Deck 4 & 5

Deck 6

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Positions of Viewership - Every deck space either functions as a platform for looking or a place to be looked upon. The privileged position of viewership is always given to the more private, higher space.

Pictured - Deck 4 & 6 Summer Condition 83

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Deck Placement - The Artist Residence’s stair sequence maintains the deck-stair-deck-stair rhythm of typical triple -deckers, however it abandons its typical placement along the house’s rear facade by occupying the structure’s center.

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Plan A | Deck 1

Plan C | Deck 4 & 5 86

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Envelope & Geometry - The Artist Residence’s underlying geometry and envelope both reinforce and undermine continuity between the new and existing structures. The gable roof and aperture treatment unify new and old, however their contrasting circular and rectilinear massing thwart such a unity.

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Flood 2017 St. Olaf College - Independent Series Advisors - Professor Michon Weeks

A flood is both psychologically and physically ominous.

This six-part series investigates how this theme can be manipulated and interpreted in a variety of contexts - as a symbol, a metaphor and as an object - to better understand its character. The series is neither linear nor cyclical, but rather a collection of variations on a single idea.

In an ecological context, the flood can be taken literally.

As the threat and effects of climate change continue to rise, so do our oceans. For some, the flood has arrived.

For others, the flood merely represents an abstract, distant future.

Taken in a psychological context, the flood adopts metaphorical properties. For those struggling with mental illness, the threat of future depressed or anxious episodes, psychosis and/or treatment can be as ominous as the experiences themselves. Water is not necessary for a flood to exist - anything powerful and all-consuming can take its place.

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Senior Series Spring, 2018 St. Olaf College - Senior Studies Advisors - Professors Michon Weeks, Peter Nelson & Paul Briggs

In this four-part series, I explore the dualities that exist between exterior and interior space - the natural and the human-made, turbulence and harmony, dominance and submission etc. Windows and vegetation function as both symbols of mediation between interior and exterior worlds and as characters in this drama.

Inspiration for this series emerged from the design work I was simultaneously completing on an unbuilt learning space situated in St. Olaf’s restored prairie. The design process forced me to consider the complex issues we create when we distinguish exterior space from interior space. This series responds to these issues.

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Incoming (2018) Oil on Canvas 48” x 60”

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Whose Home? (2018) Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

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Whose Still? (2018) Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

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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.

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X and Y (2019) Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

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Guts #3 (2018) Oil on Canvas 22” x 24”

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Guts #2 (2018) Oil on Canvas 18” x 24”

Guts #4 (2018) Oil on Canvas 22” x 24”

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Bow (2019) Oil on Canvas 20” x 24”

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Torque #1 (2019) Oil on Canvas 22” x 24”

Torque #2 (2019) Oil on Canvas 18” x 24”

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Within and Without (2019) Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

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Link (2019) Oil on Canvas 36” x 48”

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