Dr. Athanassios Economou is Associate Professor in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou teaching and research is in the areas of shape grammars, parametric design, computer aided design and discrete mathematics and design (combinatorics, symmetry, proportion). Recent funded research projects include the shape grammar for Federal Courthouses (Federal Courthouse Typology; 2010-2015; $1,071,038) and a web-based database for the US Courthouses (CourtsWeb, 2007-2010; $531,000).  

Dr. Economou teaches core and elective courses in the field of Design and Computation and a series of graduate and undergraduate architectural design studios on formal composition and rule-based architectural design. Design projects from his graduate studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards and honorable mentions in international and national architectural competitions (Van Alen Awards in Public Architecture, 2nd prize, 1999; ACSA International Competition 2nd prize, 2001; ACSA International Competition 2nd prize, 2005; and others). He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab (SCL) at COA and the Georgia Tech Study Abroad Program on Architecture and Art in Greece and Italy. Recent research projects at the SCL lab include collaborative projects with TU Vienna /Swap Architects on digital applications of shape grammars (Palladian villas: Towards Neo- and Post-Palladian Languages; 2010-2011; Grape: Capturing Emergence through Graph grammars; 2010-2011; Sieve: A computational approach for the automated generation of the symmetry structure of finite n-dimensional shapes and n≤3; 2007-09).

He has served on the Technical Committees for various Associations for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA; ECAADE; CAADRIA; SIGRADI; CAADFutures), the Scientific Committee of Mathematics and Design (M&D), the Scientific Committee of Computational Aesthetics, and others. He has been invited to lecture at several Universities including MIT, GSD-Harvard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, the University of Los Angeles, (UCLA), the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, the University of the Aegean, Greece and others.

Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture (1990) from the National Technical University (NTUA), Athens, Greece, a Masters of Architecture (1992) from the University of Southern California (USC), and a PhD in Architecture (1998) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).