Born in Seattle and raised in British Columbia, Joel Turkel earned a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Manitoba, and Masters of Architecture from MIT where he was named the Ann Beha traveling fellow. He is a recipient of the Marvin E. Goody prize in Architecture for his work on prefabricated residential building systems.
Turkel worked under architect Fernando Domeyko-Perez and with several international groups including the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in both India and Syria; the Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Ethiopia; and the Space in and In-Between Workshop under the direction of architects Steven Holl, Fumihiko Maki and Frank Gehry.