A legend made its way through the Georgia Tech architecture studios in the late 1960s: Once the lights turned on for the Architecture building's 1952 debut, they were never turned off, ever again.

There were also drag races in the old Architecture parking lot; faces getting cut by mat knives in rude, studio awakenings; the glow of welders working on Peachtree Plaza, lighting up a late-night view of midtown, Atlanta; the ominous "drownproofing" class. 

These were the experiences that help shape the creativity and curiosity of the American Institute of Architects' (AIA) newest fellows.

Now part of a tradition of excellence in architecture going back to 1860, Anne Kolman Smith (BS ARCH 1985), Gary Coursey (BS ARCH 1970) and Donald Horn (M ARCH 1988) were indelibly influenced by their time at Georgia Tech. Following their induction into the AIA College of Fellows, we caught up with these three alums to find out why studying architecture at Tech made such a difference.

Gary Coursey, FAIA

Gary Coursey founded Gary B. Coursey & Associates, Architects Inc. (CG&A) in 1971, the year after he earned his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Georgia Tech. His practice focuses on innovative design and has a project list that represents over $3.0 billion in construction costs.

Coursey said that from the time he was five years old, he knew he wanted to attend Georgia Tech. He grew up less than five miles from the campus and was cheering the Yellow Jackets on as long as he could remember. But he didn't do so until he was 23 and was already working with John Portman and Associates.

"I was older than most students, so I was more dedicated to learning than a normal 18 year old," Coursey said. "One of the most influential professors there was Griffith Edwards. Back in the '60s he was a partner with John Portman, so I worked with him part of the day and then took classes from him at other times of the day."

Coursey remembered how Architecture students weren't as big of a group as some of the Engineer students were. But the Architecture students made up for their numbers by an impressive ability, he said.

"We felt the engineers were out partying after they got out of class. Architecture students were just getting started," he said. "We would stay up three days in a row to get the project completed. Our work was very fluid."

Anne Kolman Smith, FAIA, LEED

Anne Kolman Smith built an award-winning architecture career in Savannah, Georgia, following her graduation from Georgia Tech. A principal in Kolman & Smith, Architects and Lominack, Kolman & Smith, Architects, she also found a knack for leading professional and national groups, including the Georgia State Board of Architects and Interior designers, the National Council of Architectural Registration Board (NCARB) and AIA.

Smith came from an architect family (she eventually practiced with her father, Ronald Kolman, FAIA) and knew she had something to prove. That's why she chose to attend Georgia Tech in 1973 -- it was also her father's alma mater.

She left Tech in 1975 but returned in early 1980s, this time with her husband, a growing family and a new vigor for calculus.

"I brought my husband to married housing and actually had my son before I graduated," she said. "Jokes were made about be going into labor during structures finals." Smith said her pregnancy led to strong bonding experiences with her classmates but their bets about her due date were shortsighted -- she gave birth to her son two weeks after that structures final.

“When I came back in the ‘80s, things changed a lot,” Smith said. There were more women in her classes than there were in the mid-1970s, she said, and that made her challenge as a mother and a student a little easier. “We had to try a little harder, try to learn to be one of the guys and put gender aside,” she said. “You had to speak your mind and be part of the group, then people would accept you.”

Smith also remembers taking an electrical engineering class in Fortran, so that she could learn how to plot a curve using a computer program. "At the end of the quarter we were so excited because we had this one sheet of paper that was a curve," she said.

Donald R. Horn, FAIA, LEED Fellow

Don Horn is the Deputy Director of the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration. A leader in green building policy development, he promotes environmentally responsible decision-making for buildings, translating green building strategies and ideals into regulations and guidance to meet federal goals for building performance.

He chose to attend Georgia Tech in 1986 in the pursuit of his Master in Architecture degree -- after working six years as an architect following undergraduate study at the University of Virginia.

"I actually saved up and quit working and went to grad school for two years," he said, "and a lot of the other students would work while they were in grad school taking four or five years to finish."

Horn remembers what a difference those six years between undergraduate and graduate studies made:

"I wanted a different experience from my undergraduate years, and I thought the city of Atlanta would be a nice change. While I was at Georgia Tech there was this big dialogue between theory and practice. There were PhDs students and theorists there with strange ideas of Deconstructivism and there were practicing architects as well. It was an interesting mix of people and a whole different conversation, this thing with Deconstructivism. It was not on anyone's radar when I graduated from undergrad."

The campus was different than what he was used to as well.

"I was coming from Virginia, what more inspirational setting could you think of than Jefferson's lawn and rotunda, and then to go to Georgia Tech with all these functional buildings, it was brick and flat," he said. "But I would walk by the engineering buildings and see all these names like Geo-technical Engineering and Textile something-or-other Engineering, all these things that I never even knew existed. That really left an impression."