Joseph N. Biondo

A native of Pennsylvania Joe graduated from Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Architecture. Shortly after graduation, he pursued a lengthy career with the National firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects where he worked closely with AIA Gold Medal recipient Peter Bohlin helping to develop the firm’s current design vocabulary. In 1996 he established Joseph N. Biondo Architects before joining Spillman Farmer Architects in 2003 where he is currently bringing design excellence to the forefront.

Biondo’s architecture has been described as poetic solutions to site opportunities and user needs, craftsman-like in its concern for detail and process and sculptural in its integration of space, light, materials and their means of construction. The work is recognized for its attempts to do more than demonstrate some narrow architectural issue and largely reflects ties to regional traditions. His buildings represent an architecture that is clear, precise and honest and reflects on what is absolutely necessary. He specializes in an architecture whose form is developed from the intense working of materials and their means of construction — an exploitation of materials and connections whose sensory and tactile qualities are revealed and further heightened through the movement of light.

Joseph’s work celebrates the “process of making” and is deeply influenced by his family background which is rooted in the garment and construction industries. Joseph believes that architecture should be made to last and be of the highest quality. Buildings should be around for generations and must take care not just to express the language of a moment, but to capture the eternal aspects of a moment.

Joseph Biondo/Spillman Farmer Architects is currently working with the City of Easton on their New City Hall and Transportation Center. He is also working with the City’s Redevelopment Authority to develop a turn-of-the-century silk mill into an integrated complex of buildings and open space dedicated to the development and advancement of the creative and cultural industries — a self-sustaining community that generates creative, intellectual and economic capital. The vision, much like the making of silk, is to be grounded in the environment, ecology and science.

Joe’s work has been recognized by his peers in the AIA and has been featured in the profession’s most prestigious publications. In 2012, The ArtsQuest Center on the Steel Stacks Campus in Bethlehem was awarded a Silver Medal by the Pennsylvania AIA, the highest honor the chapter bestows. This was the third Silver Medal of his career. In 2009, the Biondo family’s residence in Northampton was awarded a Silver Medal. In 2003, he was awarded a Silver Medal for Lafayette College’s Williams Visual Arts Building in Easton. In 2007, his design for the Central Energy Plant at Dickinson College was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Pennsylvania AIA. Other recent work includes The Ahart Family Arts Plaza at Lafayette, and the Northampton County Historical & Genealogical Society’s Sigal Museum.

A passionate practitioner of the art and craft of architecture, Joseph is also actively involved in advancing the profession, serving as design juror at many AIA organizations throughout the country and as Visiting Professor for some of the country’s most prestigious programs of architecture including Syracuse University, The University of Tennessee, Lehigh University, Marywood University, Montana State and Kansas State University among others.