Joel Sanders, FAIA, is the founder and principal of JSA/MIXdesign, an inclusive architectural design studio dedicated to making everyday building types—restrooms, art museums, and university campuses—accessible and welcoming to people of different ages, genders, abilities, cultural identities, and religions. JSA/MIXdesign initiatives include Stalled!, an AIA award-winning project that responds to national controversies surrounding transgender access to public restrooms, and MIXmuseum, a toolkit of strategies to make museums better meet the needs of their diverse audiences.

Sanders holds a dual appointment as a Professor in the Practice at Yale School of Architecture and as a Professor at Yale School of Public Health, where he teaches classes that look at the intersection of architecture, inclusivity beyond code compliance, and mental and physical health.

In his books (STUD: Architectures of Masculinity and Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture) and publications in mainstream and design publications, Sanders explores the complex relationship between culture and social space, looking at the impact that evolving cultural forces—such as gender identity and the body, technology and new media, and the nature/culture dichotomy—have on the designed environment. JSA/MIXdesign projects have been featured in international exhibitions and the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, MoMA, SF MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Joel received an honorary doctorate from Aalto University in 2025 and is the recipient of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s 2023 Lawrence Israel Prize, as well as six New York Chapter AIA Design Awards, three New York State AIA Design Awards, three Interior Design Best of Year Awards, and two ALA/IIDA Library Interior Design Awards, among others.