The Architectural and Urban Planning Design & Research Institute of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), started in 1953 as the Planning and Design Office of the South-Central Administrative Committee for an effort of combining three colleges, is one of the earliest design institutes founded in universities directly attached to the State Ministry of Education. In 2001, it was enlarged through combining three design institutes: the Architectural and the Urban Planning Design& research Institutes of the former Wuhan Urban Construction Institute as well as the Architectural Design & Research Institute of the former HUST. It has two branches of the Architectural Design and Research Institudes of HUST and the Urban Planning Design and Research Institudes of HUST, allowing it to develop many types of design projects. It is affilited with the Architecture & Urban Planning College of HUST. It holds design certificates issued by the State Ministry of Construction in architecture, planning, intelligent design (Class A) and municipal engineering design (Class B). It also holds an Engineering Consulting Certificate (Class A) issued by the State Planning Commission. In addition, the design institute has been approved to the ISO9001 Quality Assurance Standard.
       The design institute is rich in human resources. It employs over 100 professionals including 12 State First Class Registered Architects, 3 State Second Class Registered Architects,13 State First Class Registered Structural Engineers, 20 State Registered Planning Engineers, 4 Consulting Engineers and 5 Registered Public Utilities Engineers. With such a solid technical personnel, it can handle a comprehensive range of disciplines, including architectural design, urban planning, municipal engineering design, intelligent design, interior design and engineering consulting.
       For decades, taking advantage of the university’s comprehensiveness of disciplines, the design institute has been strengthening cooperation with other departments or institutions, and fully combining theory and practice. It has efficiently completed a variety of domestic engineering consulting and design projects with high quality, achieving great social benefits and good credit. Since 1998, the design institute has won over 30 prizes for its design work in the national and provincial Excellent Engineering Design Awards.