10/14/2026
Michael James Carroll
Michael Carroll, Architect Who Found His First Lesson on a Newfoundland Shore, Dies at 62
He designed, he built, he taught, he traveled and he cooked. He sang through most of it.
Michael Carroll, an architect and teacher who believed that materials tell the story of the people and places that shape them, died on Oct. 10 in Atlanta. He was 62.
Mr. Carroll was a professor of architecture at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, where he taught for 17 years and founded MAT_LAB, a materials library, laboratory and exhibition space. Just days before he died, he received the Atlanta Design Festival's "Design is Human" Award, a fitting name for a man who never separated the work of design from the people it was meant to serve.
Michael James Carroll was born April 30, 1964, in Springdale, Newfoundland, Canada, and grew up in Baie Verte and Fortune Harbour. Years later, in his journal, in what appear to be notes for a speech, he described the place that made him:
"I grew up in a rural and rugged landscape - on the northeast coast of Newfoundland - an area settled by the Irish in the 19th century. The vernacular architecture is highly edited and severe - compacted wood frame houses. Saltboxes that sit on bedrock overlooking the North Atlantic. In retrospect my first architecture lesson was from the environment I experienced before my formal education. A lesson that continues to inform how I think and teach architecture and engage the imagination of my students."
He was a proud Newfoundlander and, as a boy, a grade-school soloist who never really stopped singing. He came out in his mid-twenties, and his twin sister, Michelle, stood by him and protected him. He loved her dearly for the rest of his life, and she loved him.
Though he embraced the energy and vibrancy of city life, Michael never lost his deep affection for the quiet beauty of Fortune Harbour. Returning to Newfoundland each summer offered him a different kind of nourishment: time spent on the back deck, feeling the cool breeze drift in off the ocean, surrounded by the familiar landscape that had first shaped his imagination. These moments of stillness brought him a sense of peace and renewal, restoring him for his return to the cities and creative communities he loved. No matter how far his work and life took him, Fortune Harbour remained a place where he could reconnect with himself and his family.
He earned his professional degree in architecture in 1988 from the Technical University of Nova Scotia, now part of Dalhousie University, where his design for infill in a
historical context in St. John's, Newfoundland, earned a medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. In 1999, he received a post-professional master's degree in architecture with honors from McGill University, where he studied under the architectural historian and theorist Alberto Pérez-Gómez and wrote his thesis on the template drawings Michelangelo designed for the Laurentian Library and the Medici Chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence.
He worked for studios in London, Seville, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax, including the office of the Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons, and he became a founding partner of atelier BUILD, a Montreal design/build practice that won the Canadian Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture in 2004 and whose work was published and exhibited in Canada, the United States, Britain and Japan. In 2019, he was elected a full member of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Architects, the body that licenses architects in his home province, and in March, he was admitted as a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
Before coming to Georgia, he was an assistant professor at Syracuse University and an adjunct professor at McGill University. In 2009, he joined the architecture faculty at what was then Southern Polytechnic State University, which became part of Kennesaw State in 2015. Through MAT_LAB, he explored materiality in contemporary architecture, with particular attention to the material expressions of underrepresented communities, and he worked with the university's microbiologists to test mycelium, the root network of fungi, as a building material. He also designed the KSU Mini-Pavilion at the Cobb County Safety Village, which doubled as a classroom for elementary school students.
In the studio, he was not an easy grader, and he did not try to be. He held his students to a high standard because he believed in them, and they knew it. He pushed each of them to find a voice, a style and an aesthetic of their own, and then to own it. He also led them on study tours to New York City, Barcelona, Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.
He held his colleagues in deep respect and took real joy in working alongside them, and many of them became close friends. That circle of collaborators, friends and former students stretched around the world, and this week, so does the grief.
For Mr. Carroll, architecture was never just a practice. It was a way to live, and his home was the proof; the best description of it is artful nesting. He was an epicurean, a superb cook and a host who would not let anyone help. He sang while he cooked, and his big laugh was never far behind.
He met his husband, Danny Smith, on the dance floor. Dating and getting to know each other came next, and before long they were smitten. There were dinners together, introductions to each other's friends and trips together, and it all grew into a strong
bond and a lifelong love. They were married on June 11, 2022. Every year Mr. Carroll insisted on a real Christmas tree, hung with ornaments from the places the two of them had traveled: Mexico, London, Paris and more.
In addition to Danny, survivors include his twin sister, Michelle Babb (Steve); a nephew, Douglas Babb; a niece, Ellen Babb; and Danny's uncle, Gerald Smith. Michael was preceded in death by his parents, Gerald and Elizabeth Carroll; his brother, Patrick Carroll; and his grandparents, Patrick and Sarah Carroll and Edward and Gertrude Shelly. Also left to cherish and remember Michael are many aunts, uncles, and cousins, across Canada and the United States.
After his death, a student left an anonymous note on the board outside his office door: "You will keep living on within all of us! You will be missed, you will be loved, and you will be remembered. Thank you for everything."
Services: Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, at A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home, 2773 N. Decatur Road, Decatur. A service will be held at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 16, at St. John's Lutheran Church, 1410 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, with a reception to follow. The service will also be livestreamed at youtube.com/live/wVMtp4ZrH50.
In lieu of flowers: The family asks that gifts be made to the Dr. Marietta Monaghan Endowed Travel Scholarship at Kennesaw State University, which helps architecture students travel to study, as so many of Michael's students did with him.
To give online, visit kennesaw.edu/giving/online-giving/cacm.php, select "Architecture Department" under "Make a Selection" and write the scholarship's name in the comments section. Donors may also select "I would like to dedicate this gift" and write in "In memory of Michael Carroll, c/o Danny Smith." Checks may be made payable to the KSU Foundation, with the scholarship's name in the memo line, and mailed to the KSU Foundation, 3391 Town Point Drive, MD 9101, Kennesaw, GA 30144.
View Michael James Carroll's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.
