Athanassios Economou
Professor; Director, Shape Computation Lab
Contact
Athanassios Economou
Professor; Director, Shape Computation Lab
Education
Ph.D. (Architecture), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 1998
M.Arch., University of Southern California (USC), 1992
Diploma (Architecture), National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), 1990
Keywords
shape grammars, computational design, formal specification of style, computer-aided design, design theory, architecture and music, generative morphology, courthouses
Biography
Athanassios (Thanos) Economou is a Professor at the School of Architecture in the College of Design and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Economou's teaching and research are in shape grammars, computational design, computer-aided design, and design theory, with over sixty published papers in these areas. He is the Director of the Shape Computation Lab, a research group that explores how the visual (and unruly) nature of shape can be formally implemented with new technologies to enable new paradigms in CAD, design automation, visual scripting, and creative design. Recently funded projects include the Shape Machine, a computational technology that allows vector-based shape search and replacement in CAD systems (NSF/iCoprs, Georgia Research Alliance, Create-X) and CourtsWeb: A visual database of Federal Courthouses (GSA/US. Courts, $1.3M). Design projects from his studios at Georgia Tech have received prestigious awards in international and national architectural competitions. He has been invited to give talks, seminars, and workshops at several universities including MIT, Harvard, TU Vienna, Tsinghua Univ, U.Michigan, NTUA, among others. Dr. Economou holds a Diploma in Architecture from NTUA, Athens, Greece, an M.Arch from USC, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from UCLA.
Statement of Teaching Interest
Pr. Economou's teaching focuses on the areas of computational design, computer-aided design, shape grammars, and design theory and bridges mathematical modeling and studio work. Pr. Economou's courses are open to all programs including undergraduate, professional and doctorate ones, and have been recognized with two outstanding teacher awards and 21 student design awards and/or honorable mentions including the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) Dissertation Award in 2022, the most prestigious architectural dissertation award in the US for the work of one of his doctorate students. His Design & Research studios are noted for their extensive usage of Shape Machine ––a vector-based shape rewrite software developed in his Shape Computation Lab at the School of Architecture–– for formal analysis and new design workflows, and a good portion of the material will be featured in his upcoming book on Shape Machine (Springer, #86998320). Over his tenure at Georgia Tech, Pr. Economou has developed three courses in the area of Design Computation decisively shaping the curriculum in the school and especially its MS.Arch. and Ph.D. programs: ARCH 6508: Shape Grammars offers a generous overview of the shape grammar formalism and its applications in design research; ARCH 6210: Architectonics takes on studies on the architecture of form from a historical and mathematical perspective; and ARCH 6051: Digital-Analog Computation examines representational systems in architectural design in terms of visual and symbolic systems. In addition to these courses, Pr. Economou has developed the UG course ARCH 3007: Architectonics in Greece and Italy, one of the three core courses of the Georgia Tech Architectonics Study Abroad program ––one of the oldest and most respected academically study abroad programs at Georgia Tech –– a program that he directs over the last 20 years; as well as a new GT VIP course centered around his research on Shape Machine attracting UG students from the schools of Interactive Computing, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, Computational Media, and Architecture, among others.
Statement of Research Interest
Pr. Economou's research is founded in the cross-disciplinary fields of design and computing and is centered around the concept of shape grammars ––a research program that is supported by principles of computational design and technical elements of CAD fundamentals, as well as computational techniques of generative algorithms, design automation and ML/AI. The research connects theoretical principles of design with advanced computational techniques and has been recently recognized at Georgia Tech with the Outstanding Research and Scholarship Award at the College of Design in 2021. The unique feature of the shape grammars research program is that is has successfully managed to capture and formalize several aspects of the primitives of visual design—including lines, angles, arcs, shapes— in a way that allows for a clear expression and codification of shape features and their interaction. The research is fundamental to design in general because it solves the difficult problem of measuring and characterizing shape patterns visually without relying on itinerant tagging, an error-prone and severely limiting approach for characterizing shapes as these have endless permutations and degrees of freedom. Recent research highlights over the last five years include the development of Shape Machine for Rhino, a vector-based shape search and rewrite technology that has successfully managed to implement the shape grammar formalism in a CAD environment allowing for the automated detection (and replacement, if necessary) of congruent, similar and affine shapes in CAD files; a book contract with Springer, 2 book chapters, 5 journal papers, 6 conference proceedings, 2 awards, 12 invited talks, 17 invited seminars and workshops, 4 conference presentations, 3 exhibition entries, 3 software applications, 2 external grants ($60K), 3 institute research grants ($25K), 1 invention disclosure and a pending patent, and the continuing stewardship of the Shape Computation Lab.
- Economou, A. (2025). Shape Machine: Shape-Based Search and Replace in CAD. In: Kotsopoulos, S. (eds) Shape Computation. Mathematics and the Built Environment, vol 9. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81623-9_16
- Chung YT, Marupudi V, Vemuri SK, Economou A, Varma S. (2025) Modeling the Viewpoint Theory of Mental Rotation. Twelfth Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems, Atlanta GA, USA. 2025. https://openreview.net/forum?id=0R0VWvE4VL
- Economou, A., Hong, TC.K, Newton, R. (2024) Shape meets Euclid: Integrating shape computation with ruler and compass procedures. Automation in Construction, Volume 165, 2024. 105562, ISSN 0926-5805, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon 105562.
- Newton, R., Economou, A. (2024) Redefining Line Maximization. In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition’24. DCC 2024. Springer, Cham, pp 250–264. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-71918-9_16
- Shi, Y., Economou, A. (2024) Dougong Revisited: A Parametric Specification of Chinese Bracket Design in Shape Machine. In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition’24. DCC 2024. Springer, Cham, pp 233–249. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-71918-9_15
- Economou, A., Hong, TC.K (2023) Back to the Drawing Board: Shape Calculations in Shape Machine. Design Computing and Cognition’22. DCC 2022. Springer, Cham. pp. 549-567, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20418-0_33
- Hong, TC.K., Economou, A. (2023) Implementation of shape embedding in 2D CAD systems, Automation in Construction, Volume 146, pp. 1-15, 104640, ISSN 0926-5805, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104640
- Hong, TC.K., Economou, A. (2022) Five Criteria for Shape Grammar Interpreters. In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition’20. Springer, Cham. pp.191-207, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90625-2_11
- Hong, TC.K., Economou, A. (2022) What shape grammars do that CAD should: The 14 cases of shape embedding. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 36, E4. pp. 1-20, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0890060421000263
- Okhoya, V.W., Bernal, M., Economou, A, Saha, N., Hong, TC.K., Haymaker, J. (2022) Generative workplace and space planning in architectural practice. International Journal of Architectural Computing. 20(3): 645-672. doi:10.1177/14780771221120580
- Yu Y., Hong TK., Economou A., Paulino G, (2021) “Rethinking Origami: On the Generation of Origami Patterns in Shape Machine”, Computer-Aided Design, ISSN: 0010-4485, Vol: 137, Page: 103029, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cad.2021.103029
- Economou, A., Hong, TCK., Ligler, H., Park, J. (2021). Shape Machine: A Primer for Visual Computation. In: Lee, JH. (eds) A New Perspective of Cultural DNA. KAIST Research Series. Springer, Singapore pp. 65-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7707-9_6
- Park, J., Economou, A. (2019) The Dirksen Grammar: A Generative Description of Mies van der Rohe’s Courthouse Design Language. Nexus Network Journal 21, 591–622 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-019-00441-8
- Quan S J., Park J., Economou A. and Lee S. (2019) "Artificial Intelligence-Aided Design: Smart Design for Sustainable City Development", Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 46(8): 1581-1599, https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319867946
- Ligler, H., Economou, A. (2019) On John Portman’s Atria: Two Exercises in Hotel Composition. In: Gero, J. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition '18. DCC 2018. Springer, Cham. pp 401-420, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05363-5_22
- Ligler H., Economou A. (2019) “From Drawing Shapes to Scripting Shapes: Architectural Theory Mediated by Shape Machine” in Proceedings of the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD), eds: Rockcastle S, Rakha T, Cerezo Davila C, Papanikolaou D, and Zakula T, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. pp. 279-286 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3390098.3390137