Image by Kyle Barker AIA
Kyle Barker AIA, 2021 Rotch Scholar
Kyle Barker AIA has been named the 2021 Rotch Travelling Scholarship recipient. He will receive a stipend to spend at least six months travelling and studying architecture around the world.
The 2021 Rotch Travelling Scholarship Competition focused on two essential and urgent projects for the future vibrancy of Boston: Outdoor Classrooms and Architecture Hidden in Plain Sight.
As we continue to recover from a crippling pandemic, preliminary finalists were challenged to create radical reconceptualization of the elementary school classroom – not only as a temporary response to the pandemic, but also as a catalyst for new models of learning for the 21st century. The final competition imagines a future in which Bostonians may pursue public leisure in parallel with the machine functions that enable it; a design of data processing center – dark and hidden from sight and, accessible public space in Boston’s Seaport.
Kyle Barker AIA is the founder of Primary Projects, an architecture firm with a focus on inclusive, energy-positive housing. He is a registered architect in Massachusetts and Michigan, and an active member of the Boston Society of Architects. Before founding his own firm, he was a Senior Associate at Merge Architects, an Associate at MASS Design Group and a Designer at Kennedy & Violich Architecture.
Barker received his Master of Architecture from the MIT Department of Architecture where he was the recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, Rosemary D. Grimshaw Thesis Prep Award, Louis C. Rosenberg Travel Fellowship and three Departmental Full Merit Scholarships. He was the runner-up for the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 2020, a finalist in 2017, and was the nationwide selection for the 2013 ZGF Architectural Scholarship.
Barker teaches studio at Northeastern University, and has taught a seminar at the Boston Architectural College and workshops at MIT. He served as an awards juror for the Massachusetts & Oklahoma chapters of the AIA and Architizer.