Education
Joseph Matto, AIA..... is a multi-award-winning Architect & Designer, having designed over 400 custom homes, buildings & innovative energy efficient structures throughout Connecticut and New England, some of which he has built, but most constructed in close collaboration with many of the best general contractors and builders along the gold coast of Fairfield County, Ct.
At his core, Joe is an intuitive and precognitive Creative Artist....A "Maker" & "Form Giver" from a young age. He was born into a family of builders and land developers, the experience of which provided him with early hands-on education in all stages of construction both residential and commercial. He unwittingly started his architectural training while drafting basic house plans for his Dad on the dining room table in order to obtain building permits, and then working on those job sites installing foundations and framing houses well before entering high school. He became familiar and proficient with each of the construction trade's methods and materials, as well as the overall design, planning and management of construction projects. It wasn't until age 33 however, that he realized his soul mission on the planet was that of an architect.
His first years in college focused on the profession of "Industrial Design" where he was inspired by many of the great mid-century modern architects and product designers of the 50’s and 60’s out of the Bauhaus tradition, particularly those who practiced across the fields of Industrial Design, Structural Engineering and Architecture. The most influential of these designers and inventors was undoubtedly the personage of Buckminster Fuller. Joe first viewed and experienced the genius of B. Fuller while touring the United State's Pavilion at Montreal's hosting of the World's Fair in 1967, a geodesic masterpiece known as.....The BioSphere.
Many years later, Joe interned at a B. Fuller associated work-group in New Haven, Ct. known as Earth (MD) Metabolic Design. It was directed by Medard Gable and Howard Brown graduate students at Yale's Forestry School who had invited Joe though a friend, Steven Smith, to learn and assist them in planning the next "World Game", a simulated logistics approach to solving humanties problems using Bucky's approach to designing that he termed "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science". Joe was honored to meet Bucky at the Towards Tomorrow Fair in Amherst several years later, and has read and studied Bucky's writing and drawings...in depth. Joe singles out "Synergetics" and "Tetra-scrolls" as being the most inspiring and influential books to him.
In 1987 Joe visited Arthur Loeb at Harvard, Bucky's co-editor of Synergetics, to present a class on the presence of the Golden Mean Ratio in geometry of the Tetrahelix, a 3-dimensional form that Bucky believed was associated with the DNA structure, and to discuss what Bucky meant by an enigmatic passage buried deep in the Synergetics tome, where he mentions "The Invisible Circuitry of Nature". Also in Synergetics, Bucky presents the tetrahelix with a claims that it is possibly the structure of the DNA molecule. The particular idea as presented has not born fruit, but Joe has discovered that by considering similar "Hypar Fields" organized within the tetrahelix framework, there are geometric correlations that indeed suggest and correlate with DNA and suggest that it could operate as a dynamic fractal spatial matrix for a living bio-dynamic information encoding structure resonantly interconnecting DNA with information fields in it's environment..... possibly the Morphogenetic Fields identified by Cambridge biologist, Rupert Sheldrake.
(Joe has also discovered correlations of this same geometry with many ancient and sacred buildings including the Pyramid of Giza, The Dome of the Rock and Stone-Henge. There are also correlations with particular significant Crop Circles in Britain and with many ancient sacred symbols and religious iconographic depictions throughout history....which is the focus of this website)
But there are other heros as well besides B. Fuller....Geniuses such as Alexander Graham Bell, Nikolas Tesla, Louis I. Kahn, Charles Jeanneret-Gris (LeCorbusier), Robert LeRicolais, Heinich Engel, and more recently Santiago Calatrava. He also felt a kinship and affinity with architects who were near contemporaries of his such as Eliot Noyes, John Johansen, and others of the celebrated New Canaan, Connecticut architects known as "The Harvard Five". Currently, In related fields of exploration Joe follows the work of Nassim Harramein, Marshal Lefferts, Alan Green & Robert Grant and the theories of the Electric Universe based on work by Wal Thornhill, Don Scott and Gerald Pollack....(See the websites linked below)
Career
In 1979, starting his business from the perspective of an Industrial Designer, Joe formed a company called SunSpace, Inc. He, and partner Colin Healy, developed modular pre-fabricated structural glazing systems for constructing passive solar sunspaces, greenhouses and solar homes. During this time, while they worked on a myriad of house styles and construction types, he discovered and awakened to the formal realm of "Architecture" with a capital “A”. This instilled in him a great love for architecture, and a passion for the profession. He soon returned to college to pursue formal studies in architecture, first at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and then transferring to Pratt Institute in New York where he completed his training garnering a 5 year professional degree in architecture. Compelled by his love of architecture, and a desire for excellence, he graduated Summa Cum Laude with perfect grades at the top of his class. Joe also holds a double degree in Industrial/Product Design and Interior Design from the Shintaro Akatsu School of Design where he also taught as a professor of design later in his career.
In his first year at RISD Joe was introduced to the underlying organizing principles of architecture....Symmetry, Proportion & Fractals (modularity across scales). These principals resonated deeply with him and coincided with a personal interest in Sacred Geometry and Ancient Megalithic structures scattered around the world. At Pratt Institute, his interest in sacred geometry as an underlying organizing principle for notable sacred buildings and landscapes, was by several professors, one of whom was Prof. Haresh Lalvani an assistant and protege of Buckminster Fuller's . Prof. Lalvani led an innovative program in Advanced Morphology and supported Joe's fascination with sacred geometry and challenging him to push the boundaries of knowledge particularly with respect to hyperdimensional tetrahedral geometries. Another teacher, Professor Brent Porter, provided guidance in the rigorous study of ancient megalithic structures & sacred buildings around the world, including Islamic and biblical structures such as The Dome of the Rock and Solomon's Temple. In 1994 Joe accompanied Prof. Porter on a university sponsored expedition to survey and map the incredible site of Machu Picchu. While there in June, they conducted experiments with local archaeologists during the Peruvian winter solstice, to confirm solar and stellar alignments of some of the important structures of the Inca complex such as The Temple of The Sun, Temple of the Three Windows, and Initawana... aka "Hitching Post of the Sun". Many discoveries and mysteries emerged during this magical journey while a film crew scouted around the intrepid explorers for the making of the film..."Celestine Prophecy".
Outside of schools, Joe travelled many parts of the globe to explore and survey these enigmatic designs and structures in the landscapes of a seemingly lost advanced civilization...Cairns, Dolmens and Passage tombs....Stone Circles, Stone calendars and fields of standing stones....he was at and inside Newgrange, Ireland during the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. In 1990 he toured and studied the many cathedrals, churches and villas throughout the Italian countryside from Sicily to Florence with an eye towards investigating Renaissance and the flowering of that golden age.
In 2001, Joe matriculated into Yale's Divinity School proposing a joint masters degree program between the architecture school and the M.A.R. program in religion and the arts to study the intersection of Religious Visual Art and Architecture as relates to 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional symbols and metaphors of consciousness with respect to creativity and human spiritual evolution thru time.
Joe has taught as professor of design at the Shintaro Akatsu School of Design in Connecticut and given lectures and presentations on a wide range of topics from Passive Solar Design and Construction, Advanced Structural Morphology, to Sacred Geometry and Ancient Architecture. In these university settings as an instructor, he has also developed professional courses and curricula relating to Building Codes, Solar Design, ADA Regulations and Design, Designing Innovative Energy Efficient Houses, Commercial Construction Systems & Infrastructure, and Lighting Design. He has led advanced interior design studios and been invited to sit on student design juries at Pratt Institute's School of Architecture.
In the work-a-day world of residential & commercial architecture, good fortune has brought important clients and patrons to Joe's practice. All along Connecticut’s gold coast, from New Haven to Greenwich, clients came with increasingly more demanding projects and requirements for a refined aesthetic sensibility, constantly challenging him to solve a variety of design problems across a broad spectrum of house styles while keeping an eye towards timeless beauty and architectural integrity.
Spiritual Evolution
"Beyond my career as architect-designer-writer-poet-sculptor.....as son, father, and now grandfather in a loving and wonderful family, which I am extremely proud of.....there is another over-arching dimension to the work that I do....and who I am"
This website, TetraWave.com, attempts to chronicle and express that dimension and an alternate understanding of reality from what we were taught in our well meaning but incomplete and misdirected traditional educational curriculums.....A reality that I have been led to understand and awaken to....that there is a deeply interconnected web of intelligence and unconditional love, a universal mind and consciousness that pervades the world and each one of us at all scales and across other dimensions of awareness.
It has been with much delight that over most of my life I have sensed....more. To have been awakened to this profound realization in 1985, the result of a full-on Kundalini event while practicing Transcendental Meditation, is a sacred gift that has been a benchmark and a turning point in my own personal maturation and evolution. Profound realizations & sacred information in the form of telepathic or higher dimensional information processes that attuned me to a greater reality. These mental downloads and synchronistic guidance transforming the very fabric of my daily reality in the outer world, led me to re-discover eternal truths and a perennial wisdom of legendary mystics and ancient sages. Truths that reveals us to ourselves as participants in a grand divine reality where everything and everyone is connected and co-creating.....where all one has to do is breathe, look inward, and "Be Here Now". In these timeless moments of pure awareness.... we can realize who we actually are and the reality of a direct instantaneous connection to the Source of all Being in the infinite cosmic mind of this universe. As humans we can heal, transform, and direct our lives with divine will, intention, and unconditional love.... changing the outer world around us from within our deepest moments of awareness.