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Architectural Education: The Latest Architecture and News

The Best Architecture Schools in the U.S. 2017

With schools around the country starting back up again, it’s time for the latest edition of DesignIntelligence’s yearly rankings of the Top Architecture Schools in the US for both undergraduate and graduate programs. This year, CEOs, managing partners, and human-resource directors from more than 2,000 firms were asked to list the 10 programs from each category they felt best prepared students for success in the profession of architecture.

This information, along with detailed accounts on the best programs that teach skills in design, computer applications, sustainability and construction methods & materials, factored into the creation of the 2017 rankings. In addition, over 2,785 students were polled on the quality of their program and their plans for post-graduation. The two top schools, Cornell for undergraduates and Harvard for graduates, were once again named the best programs to attend, according to the study.

Read on to see the list of the top 10 undergraduate and graduate programs in the US.

Kean University to Acquire Michael Graves Residence After Rejection by Princeton

The residence belonging to famed Postmodernist architect Michael Graves will be sold to Kean University, home to the new Michael Graves College for architecture and design, after receiving approval from its board of trustees. Following Graves’s death last year, the architect’s will stipulated that the residence, his studio, another property were to be donated to Princeton University, Graves’s neighbor and longtime employer. But Princeton University felt the buildings would be better served in another capacity and rejected the gift, allowing Kean to step in.

Strelka Institute Launches Scholarships for New Master’s Programme

Moscow's Strelka Institute has launched a series scholarships that will cover expenses for its first joint master’s programme with the HSE Graduate School of Urbanism, called ‘Advanced Urban Design’. Three scholarships will be granted to remarkable emerging leaders in the spheres of urban design and research to fully pursue a two-year study.

US Architecture School Bans Styrene as Model Making Material

By next Fall, the architecture students of Washington University in St. Louis will no longer be allowed to use Styrene on their projects. The university's newspaper, Student Life reports that the commonly used white plastic material was deemed in 2014 by the National Research Council's National Toxicology Program as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen." Thus the Sam Fox School of Design is taking its own measures to protect their student's health. A number of other schools and cities have already banned Styrene since the NRC's ruling.

How to Improve Architectural Education: Learning (and Unlearning) From the Beaux Arts Method

Learning how to design is hard. It requires students to learn an entirely new way of thinking and seeing the world. It even requires a whole new vocabulary. So architecture school is rightly hard. However, architecture school is known for being hard for the wrong reasons; studio is considered a mystical place on college campuses full of sleep-deprived students who are designing simply because professors decree that they must—so much so that when a non-architecture student meets an architecture student on the Quad they immediately offer their condolences. This perception exists because studio culture has not yet evolved from its rigid hierarchy, originating in the Beaux Arts teaching method, that thrives on competition and intensity and creates a breeding ground for unhappy students.

6 Phases Every Architecture Student Goes Through

Common Edge has published a cheeky "letter to prospective architecture parents" that preps them for the changes their child will soon undergo by detailing the 6 phases of architectural education: "Architecture school is a peculiar beast. It almost never actually prepares students to be practicing architects, and 90% of what is written by architects and architectural theorists is incomprehensible garbage. But being able to discern what is and what is not incomprehensible garbage is a profoundly useful life skill."

The six phases each architecture student goes through includes: 

Dean of 'The Cass' in London Resigns Over Proposed Relocation Plans

Robert Mull, former Dean of London Metropolitan University's Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design—also known as 'The Cass'—has resigned over a dispute about proposed relocation plans for the school's campus in Aldgate, East London. As reported in The Independent, campaigners argue that the move, which was first announced in October 2015 by the university's Vice Chancellor John Raftery, would cause courses and jobs to be unnecessarily cut. The university's vision, named 'One Campus, One Community', aims to invest £125million ($185million) to create "a new, single campus in Islington, north London, bringing all of the [university's] faculties together on one site for the first time in the institution’s 170-year history."

SCI-Arc EDGE: Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture

In November, SCI-Arc Director Hernan Diaz Alonso announced the launch of SCI-Arc EDGE, Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture. Beginning in fall 2016, the new center is intended to serve as a platform for multiple postgraduate programs. Diaz Alonso sat down to talk about SCI-Arc EDGE, the philosophy behind it, and the fields of study it will offer.

DesignIntelligence 25 Most Admired Educators for 2016

DesignIntelligence has named 25 educators for being the most "exemplary professionals" in their field. With professors from some of the US' top architecture schools, each honoree was selected with "extensive input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students."

The "most admired" US design professors of 2016, include:

3 Universities Win 2015 NCARB Award to Develop Programs that Merge Education and Practice

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has selected the architectural programs at Mississippi State University, Philadelphia University and the University of Florida as the recipients of the 2015 NCARB Award for the Integration of Practice and Education. The Award helps the selected universities develop "innovative curricula that merge practice and education." This year over $99,000 was awarded to the three programs to develop their proposed initiatives.

“What makes the NCARB Award different from other awards is that it is focused on fostering collaboration between the academy and practice,” said NCARB President Dennis S. Ward, AIA, NCARB in a press release. “This year’s proposals all go further to give students, practitioners, and others within the profession meaningful interactions that will raise awareness for the architect’s role and address issues that are central to practice.”

Learn more about three proposals after the break. 

The Architecture School Survival Guide

Starting out on the path of architectural education can be daunting. With so much to learn and so many different ways to approach design, often the most basic principles are left for the student to learn the hard way. Predicated upon the idea that "every year new architecture students make the same mistakes," Iain Jackson's new book "The Architecture School Survival Guide" offers tips, tricks and advice to help make the transition from novice to capable student just that little bit less painful. Covering everything from how to properly approach contextual design to how often to back up your work, the book is full of ideas that new students will find enlightening, and older students - and even professionals - are likely to find useful as reference points. Read on for an excerpt of the book's fifth chapter, "Process."

A Second Century of Architectural Education in the Pacific Northwest

This article was written by Brian L. McLaren, PhD, Chair in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle on the second century of the school. 

The Department of Architecture at the University of Washington recently celebrated its first century with an engaging series of lectures, symposia and social events that explored its past, present and future. The architecture program began under the direction of Chair Carl F. Gould with a cohort of just over 10 students in the fall of 1914. Although it has expanded considerably over the years and experienced many ideological shifts, the Department remains a leading force for architectural education and culture in the Pacific Northwest. It does this by continuing to honor its past while understanding the present as a time of sweeping change and exceptional opportunity. As the profession evolves to embrace new and more agile models of practice in response to contemporary challenges, the department’s home city of Seattle is experiencing phenomenal growth and expanding global influence. To study architecture at the University of Washington today is to directly engage and influence this extraordinary time of challenge and change.

The Best US Architecture Schools for 2016 are...

DesignIntelligence has released their 2016 rankings of the Best Architecture Schools in the US for both undergraduate and graduate programs. Nearly 1500 professional practice organizations were surveyed this year, as part of the survey's 16th edition, and were asked the following question: “In your firm’s hiring experience in the past five years, which of the following schools are best preparing students for success in the profession?”

This information, along with detailed accounts on the best programs that teach skills in design, communication, sustainability and technology, resulted in the 2016 rankings. The two top schools, Cornell for undergraduates and Harvard for graduates, held their positions as the best programs to attend, according to the study.

Without further ado, the top 10 undergraduate and graduate programs in the US are...

Radical Pedagogies: Lina Bo Bardi’s Theory of an Immediate-Life-Architecture (1957)

ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with Radical Pedagogies, an ongoing multi-year collaborative research project led by Beatriz Colomina with a team of PhD students of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, presenting a series of paradigmatic cases in architectural education. In this fourth example of Radical Pedagogies in Latin America, Vanessa Grossman (PhD Candidate in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University) presents Lina Bo Bardi's application for a chair at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies of the University of São Paulo. Although the application was rejected by the faculty commission, the submitted essay still is a singular source of new ideas for architectural education.

"We performed hitherto a sort of tour throughout time and throughout the “theories” of architecture, dwelling upon one of the aspects and modes of interpretation: the critical aspect. But the experience of teaching has led us to assume, among students, a certain impatience. This impatience we know very well: it means that we no longer feel the sap flowing from the past, that we have almost constitutionally “cut the roots,” that the natural habit of a calm and methodical study no longer exists, despite the consciousness of an acquired cultural heritage. It is the impatience of those who no longer want to know things that do not produce a result soon, of things that do not serve solutions to the problems of immediate life."

—Lina Bo Bardi, Introduction to “Problems of Method,” the second and final chapter of Propaedeutic Contribution to the Teaching of Architecture Theory (1957) [p. 45 in the 1992 Brazilian edition].

Radical Pedagogies: School and Institute of Architecture of Valparaíso (1952-1972)

ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with Radical Pedagogies, an ongoing multi-year collaborative research project led by Beatriz Colomina with a team of PhD students of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, presenting a series of paradigmatic cases in architectural education. Today, Ignacio González Galán (Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP) presents the most important —and living— example in architectural education in Latin America, the School and Institute of Architecture of Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, led by architect Alberto Cruz with a group of artists: the poet Godofredo Iommi, the sculptor Claudio Girolla, and the architects Fabio Cruz, Miguel Eyquem, José Vial, Arturo Baeza, Francisco Méndez and Jaime Bellalta. The program's deep dialogue with poetry, arts and the craft of architecture is the main distinguishing feature of its pedagogy. Its ideals have been materialized in Open City, a space for architectural experimentation to the north of Valparaíso in which some professors and researchers live.

Starting in 1952, the Architecture School at Valparaiso offered simultaneously an elaboration of the intellectual project of modernity and a response to modern architecture as it had been institutionalized in Latin America. Led by Chilean architect Alberto Cruz and Argentinean poet Godofredo Iommi, its pedagogy bypassed architectural sources and turned to a wider set of references from the avant-garde in a quest for the “absolutely modern.”

Prototyping the Future

Digital design and fabrication have combined with ubiquitous computing and globalization to change the field of architecture. At California College of the Arts in San Francisco, faculty and students in the Bachelor of Architecture, Master of Architecture, and Master of Advanced Architectural Design programs team up with companies, agencies, and community groups to make architecture that addresses the challenges and opportunities of economic growth, climate change, and technological disruption.

Radical Pedagogies: Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies of Tucumán (1947-1952)

ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with Radical Pedagogies, an ongoing multi-year collaborative research project led by Beatriz Colomina with a team of PhD students of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, presenting a series of paradigmatic cases in architectural education. In this article, Horacio Torrent (Full Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile School of Architeture) presents the example of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies of the National University of Tucumán in Argentina, led by Jorge Vivanco with a group of invited Italian professors. The Institute's key radical approach was in the real materialization of their architecture, including actual commissions and clients, with the university's own campus being the most important of these projects.

In 1947, Italian professors Ernesto Rogers, Cino Calcaprina, Luigi Piccinato, Enrico Tedeschi and civil engineer Guido Oberti were invited to teach at the School of Architecture, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Jorge Vivanco, the school’s Dean, contacted the group of professors after attending the 6th Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM) in Bridgwater, England. Vivanco also appointed the Argentinian architects Eduardo Sacriste, Horacio Caminos, Hilario Zalba, José Le Pera, Rafael Onetto, and Jorge Bruno Borgato. Together, these professors took part in one of the most radical and short-lived experiences in architectural teaching in Latin America at the time.

Radical Pedagogies: Tibor Weiner and the School of Architecture of University of Chile (1943-1963)

Education is changing fast all over the world. In recent decades, a great number of small local initiatives focused on the individual person, pursuing creativity, curiosity and diversity, have been disrupting through the secular traditional model of education. We have also seen an increasing number of online initiatives which expand access to knowledge to people who didn't have it before - the only requirement is a computer with internet. And the best of it: most of them are open and free. But what about architectural education? Has it experienced the same transformation?

In partnership with Radical Pedagogies, an ongoing multi-year collaborative research project led by Beatriz Colomina with a team of PhD students of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, we will be publishing a series of paradigmatic cases in architectural education. In this article, Daniel Talesnik (PhD Candidate in History and Theory of Architecture at Columbia University) presents the first radical case in Latin America: the reform led by Tibor Weiner at the University of Chile influenced by the principles of Bauhaus.