The results of the institute’s in-house research, which is primarily influenced by the areas of interest of the teaching staff and the holdings of the simultaneously established archive, have been presented since 1968 in a publication series.

Since then, the main acquisition emphasis has been on the architecture of the nineteenth century and the pre-modern, modern (Swiss) architecture in the form of collections (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM)), as well as advance legacies and bequests of individual architects of international stature (including Karl Moser, Hans Bernoulli, Lux Guyer, Haefeli Moser Steiger, Ernst Gisel, Fritz Haller and Trix and Robert Haussmann).

The institute’s educational provisions are supplemented by the programme Master of Studies in the History and Theory of Architecture, which mediates between practice and scholarship (since 1992).

There is a close academic exchange with the Werner Oechslin Library Foundation, associated with the ETH Zurich via a cooperation agreement.

Along with the establishing and verification of facts, the gta Institute has always been at pains to review applied methods in terms of their validity as models and to make them beneficial to contemporary architecture.