Rick Joy

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Rick Joy (born 1958 in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine) is an American architect and the founder of Studio Rick Joy in Tucson, Arizona. He studied music at the University of Maine and architecture at the University of Arizona, graduating in 1990. After three years with Will Bruder Architects on the Phoenix Public Library project, he started Rick Joy Architects in 1993. The firm was renamed Studio Rick Joy in 2019 and grew to about 30 staff.

Joy’s work ranges from contemporary designs to traditional architecture and master planning, with projects around the world. His firm has earned several major awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture (2002), the Smithsonian/National Design Award (2004), and induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame (2019). Joy has lectured widely and has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard GSD, Rice, the University of Arizona, and MIT. His first book, Desert Works, appeared in 2002.

Early desert homes used rammed earth, steel, and concrete, and later projects span Idaho, Vermont, Manhattan, and beyond. In the late 2010s the studio expanded to Turks and Caicos and Ibiza, added a lighting design practice led by Claudia Kappl Joy, and completed Princeton’s transit hall and market. Notable later projects include a luxury Aman Resorts hotel in southern Utah, the St. Edward’s University Campus Chapel, and a 9-story housing block for the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara. The studio also engages in large-scale master planning in places like Mexico, Utah, York (Maine), Le Massif (Canada), and a major Tucson development.