[3][4] The first professional body in independent Ghana, it was registered in 1962 and inaugurated in December 1964 as a self-governing and fully indigenous institution to advance the architectural practice, education and accreditation in the country.
[3][4] These architects included T. S. Clerk, D. K. Dawson, J. S. K. Frimpong, P. N. K., Turkson, J. Owusu-Addo, O. T. Agyeman, A. K. Amartey, E. K. Asuako, W. S. Asamoah, M. Adu-Donkor, K. G. Kyei, C. Togobo, V. Adegbite, M. Adu Bedu and E. Kingsley Osei.
[6] The founding members of the erstwhile GCSA were mostly British expatriate architects who were employees of the colonial civil service and attached to the Public Works Department (P.W.D.).
[6] This crop of early Ghanaian architects also doubled as external examiners and guest lecturers at the Department of Architecture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.
[4] The Institute's official inaugural ceremony was on Friday 11 December 1964 at 20:30 GMT at the Commonwealth Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon.
[3][4][6] The first executives were inducted during the event with Theodore S. Clerk being elected the first president of the Ghana Institute of Architects, after which he gave his acceptance speech.
Bensah, the then Minister of Works and Housing was the Chairman of the inaugural event, assisted by Nana Kobina Nketia IV, Director, Institute of Art and Culture, R.P.
Honorary Associates:' The Council may, subject to the approval of the Institute, elect from time to time as Honorary Associates persons who have not professionally engaged in the practice of Architecture but have distinguished themselves in other professions or other fields of learning or have shown exceptional interest in matters relating to Architecture and Town Planning or have rendered commendable service to the Institute.
Every Fellow and Associate shall upon registration be entitled to obtain The founding of the colonial architectural society, the Gold Coast Society of Architects had ties to the establishment of the School of Architecture, Building Technology and Planning at the KNUST in 1952 when a feasibility team made up of British, German and American architects and academics arrived in the country.
[3] The committee included Britons, Charles Hobbis, Tafi Evans and Miles Danby; German professor, Lutz Christians who lived and lectured at the KNUST until 1970s, and American Labelle Prussin who wrote the first book on architecture in Ghana “Architecture of Northern Ghana” and was among a group that designed the housing units for displaced communities arising from the construction of the Akosombo Dam project on the Volta Lake.
Other British architects who were practitioners of the then nascent academic field of “tropical architecture” were Jane Drew and Max Fry who designed the buildings of Bechem Teacher Training College in the Tano South District of the Brong Ahafo Region in addition to those at the Prempeh College and the Opoku Ware School, both in Kumasi.
[3] During the Kwame Nkrumah administration in the 1950s, several architectural engineers were sent to the newly independent Ghana by Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito as a sign of friendship between the two nations.
[3] These architects from the former Eastern Bloc designed buildings using an international modernist approach which was considered globally trendy in that period.
[3] The American architect, Max Bond who returned to his homeland after the 1966 coup d’état, designed Bolgatanga Regional Library.
[17] He studied by correspondence at Bennet College in England before winning a colonial scholarship in 1944 to Leeds University where he graduated in architecture in 1946.
He returned to Accra in 1948 and became an Assistant Town Planning Officer at the Public Works Department, where he designed the Roof Loan Scheme.