GVSA, founded in Atlanta in 1996 as Goode Van Slyke Architecture and now branded under the acronym, works on institutional, civic, transit and mixed-use projects across the Southeast and into Texas. The firm was launched by Chris Goode with Paul Van Slyke a few weeks before the Centennial Olympic Games, and it operates from the Goode Building on John Wesley Dobbs Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward, with additional work out of Greensboro, Raleigh and Austin. Aviation and transportation are a consistent thread: GVSA is associate architect with Corgan on the Concourse D widening at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a $1.4 billion structural widening delivered while the concourse stays in revenue service. The practice also takes on master planning and urban design work alongside building commissions.
GVSA’s project index reads as a straightforward record of Atlanta’s institutional building over three decades, dated year by year.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2017. The Atlanta Gas Light Regional Headquarters in 2018. 126 Renaissance in 2021. Seven88 West Midtown Condominiums and the Atlanta Gas Light Business Center in Clayton County, both 2022. Kiser Middle School and Spelman College’s Mary Schmidt Campbell Center for Innovation & the Arts in 2025. Currently in progress: Veridian Buckhead, the James Brown Arena in Augusta, One West End, and two packages at Hartsfield-Jackson, the Aviation Administration Center and the Concourse D widening.
The service list is broader than a design studio’s usual offering, and the parts that are less visible from outside are the ones worth naming. Feasibility, zoning and highest-and-best-use studies sit at the front of a project, before an owner has committed to a scheme. Construction administration sits at the back: coordinating with contractors, reviewing submittals, running site visits, answering RFIs, tracking progress and resolving field conditions so the built result still matches the design intent. Historic preservation documentation and renovation is handled as its own discipline, involving detailed surveys, archival research and code analysis, with the stated aim of keeping character-defining elements while integrating modern systems.
Master planning and urban design is framed around context rather than composition. The studio describes considering how a building meets, shapes and respects its setting, whether that setting is dense urban fabric or open ground, and describes its architectural work as defined by restraint and clarity, aiming for environments that are intuitive to navigate and calm to occupy. On the interiors side, tenant improvement work covers space planning, finish selection, lighting design and building systems coordination for leased space.
The firm brands itself now under the acronym rather than the founders’ names, but the studio’s public face is still a small one: a single enquiry line on 404-523-5525 and information@gvsa.com, with the office in the Goode Building on John Wesley Dobbs Avenue.
