Facts + Impact

The College

We will transform the world with good design.

Founded in 1965 as the New School of Architecture, the UT College of Architecture and Design is now comprised of the schools of Architecture, Interior Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Design.
The college is located in the award-winning Art + Architecture Building on UT’s Knoxville campus and in the Fab Lab in downtown Knoxville.
Enrollment in the college is about 700.
The average GPA of incoming architecture freshmen is about 4.00. The average ACT is 28.4.
In the DesignIntelligence 2016 report, the School of Architecture’s undergraduate program was ranked #10 among public schools and #25 among all schools.
In 2014, the college partnered with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Governor’s Chair for Energy + Urbanism, an unprecedented, five-year, $2.5 million partnership that opens new vistas of research and exploration in sustainable design through the unique collaboration of science, design and academia.

Contributing to downtown Knoxville’s urban renewal is the college’s 20,000-square-foot Fab Lab, a historic building turned state-of-the-art fabrication facility outfitted with an impressive array of advanced technology. Acquired by the college in 2013, the Fab Lab features two floors of 21st Century technology and is an innovation hub, with a classroom, studio, workshop and laboratory for exploring design.
Equipment and technology include a nine-axis robot, industry-grade water-jet cutter, x-axis mill, vacuum former, and CNC routers. Students can explore with robotics, 3D printers and a laser cutter as well as a metal shop and woodshop.
Through rapid prototyping, students’ designs move from flat computer screens to models in their hands in mere hours. Students work with many substrates, from foam to plastics and from titanium to aluminum.

Through exploration, collaboration and mission-driven innovation, the program applies design excellence, environmental performance and social responsibility to many challenges in the built environment to positively impact society and prepare students for careers in design.
The design/build program started in 1976 and has produced award-winning and precedent-setting structures.
In 2016, the design/build program was named in the Top 7 by Study Architecture, a program of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Summer Design Camp is for curious, creative, problem-solving high school students. Immersed for one week in a one-of-a-kind summer experience, students from across the country learn to think and innovate as designers on UT’s campus.
The only camp of its kind in the region, design camp is hosted by the UT College of Architecture and Design in its award-winning Art + Architecture building in the heart of UT’s Big Orange Country.
Established in 2008, design camp prepares high school students interested in design to engage imaginatively with the built environment and explore the considerations that shape it.
Campers engage in hands-on instruction in design, a variety of activities that challenge their thinking about design, field trips to area locations for design interpretation and activities on the UT campus.

Digital Fabrication Services @ the UT Fab Lab is a design resource available to academic and professional designers across the region.
Digital Fabrication Services, the first resource of its kind located in Knoxville and serving the region, is a partner for designers in the profession or who serve in academic positions.
Digital Fabrication Services offers production of prototypes and idea generation, leveraging the sophisticated digital and analog resources in our Fab Lab, a 20,000-square-foot maker space, and the expertise of the Fab Lab staff.
Rates for the use of the services vary depending on the technology utilized and other factors, and funds collected through Digital Fabrication Services are used to enhance curriculum and technology for students in the college.