Bio

Joe Michael, AIA, is an award-winning architect and urban designer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has been practicing architecture and urban design for 20 years, has worked in Washington DC, Boston, and NYC in addition to Raleigh, and is licensed in the State of New York and State of North Carolina. Joe is the Director of Urban Design at ISG where he excels at developing thoughtful and elegant urban design solutions that address a wide range of complex challenges, including district master plans, suburban retrofits, and vertically-integrated mixed-use projects, for both private and public sector clients. Prior to joining ISG, Joe led the Urban Design Center in the City of Raleigh's Planning Department, where he managed a team of architects, landscape architects, and planners and oversaw the development of numerous successful urban design projects. During his time in NYC with Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), Joewas a senior designer on Hudson Yards, the largest private real-estate development in US  history, as well as One Vanderbilt, the tallest office building in Midtown.

Joe has been a guest lecturer and studio critic at NC State since 2016, served as instructor for a joint architecture and landscape architecture studio in 2023, and co-instructs “How Cities Are Built” in the Pappas Real Estate Program.

Joe is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Urban Land Institute (ULI), and NAIOP Raleigh-Durham. He holds a Master of Architecture from the MIT and Bachelor of Environmental Design in Architecture from NC State University.