Think of the stimulus of being surrounded by designers, musicians, planners, builders…  these are the disciplines that come together in Georgia Tech's College of Architecture. What I want this website to do is give a clear sense of the imaginations and creativity found in the College.

Institutions of higher learning gain their distinction and unique authority through the ability to anticipate the need for new knowledge and new tools. In the College of Architecture this demands an active engagement with our occupation of the planet and the future condition of the built world.

In this occupation three forces will be formative—the continual growth in world population, the increasing movement of people into the cities, and the mounting scarcity of essential resources. It is in relation to such forces that our College of Architecture is forming its vision in which the five Schools of the College work together in a creative partnerships unique to Georgia Tech:

• the planners will create the necessary policy and legal framework;
• the designers will imagine, or re-invent, the new tools of day-to-day life;
• the architects will organize and harmonize the space in which we live and conduct business;
• the builders will bring all these plans with new efficiency into reality;
• and the musicians will expand the imagination.

If we did not need to build we would not need to plan, design, and engineer. But we must build and the future needs more building and more imagination than our world has ever known, and it is here at the Georgia Tech College of Architecture that such curiosity and creativity can be found.

Alan Balfour, Professor and Dean