The World's Best Architecture Schools in Research: 2007
The Good Oil
Every two years we survey and rate the research performance of the architecture schools in the English-speaking nations. Our survey is intended to aid postgrads {graduates} seeking a place to conduct architectural research.
The survey does not claim to be a guide to those keen to become working architects. Our rankings won't help someone out of high school looking to maximize their future prospects and income.
For that, you should buy the survey from DesignIntelligence, which provides a rankings list of American schools. Our survey has two advantages. First, it is free. Second, our survey includes every single school in the USA and Canada, unlike DesignIntelligence' paltry efforts. Everyone should examine the discussions at ArchiNect.
New Rating the individual professors. For the first time, we provide information on every single academic in the architecture schools. Based on our 2007 survey data.
Contents
Who should use our ratings?
We have attempted to measure the architecture schools and their academics {professors} in terms of their research output. We make no statement of their quality of teaching. Our only claim that is that postgrads looking to complete higher studies, or undergrads looking for an intellectual challenge, should cast a glance over our ratings.
The 2005 ratings
The original 2005 Research Report is available for free download. Its data and methodology have been superseded by our 2007 rankings. You should read it for the substantial information it has about our data collection, and a commentary on the schools' websites.
The 2007 ratings
Results for our 2007 survey are now complete. Survey data was collected in the fourth quarter of 2006 and first quarter of 2007. The study will be published as a free downloadable pdf file after we complete the survey of 2009. Until then, the results are available on this website. Features of the 2007 report:
- Every school from nine key English-speaking nations examined: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Eire, Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand
- Over 160 architecture schools rated: every single accredited school for which data was available
- Over 3,100 architectural academics assessed
Where are the ratings?
Right here:
- Schools of the United States.
- Schools of the United Kingdom.
- Schools of Canada.
- Schools of Australia.
- Schools of New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Eire.
- Schools of South Africa.
Our methodology: what and we who counted
Who got counted
In each of our surveyed countries, we counted every architecture school producing a qualification allowing the graduate to practise architecture in that country. We counted the smallest architecture unit in the school. So if a school contained departments of architecture, urban design and structures, we only counted the people in the architecture department.
We examined the websites of these schools to obtain a list of every senior academic (naturally, we assumed the lists on these sites were accurate). These are the people whom their university expects and demands research from. To be counted as a senior academic, a person had to be:
- full-time
- associate professor or above (North America), or lecturer or above (Commonwealth)
- identified as teaching architecture, as opposed to, say, urban planning, landscape design, real estate and so on
What we counted
We went to the two greatest architecture libraries in the English-speaking world: the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) British Architectural Library in the UK; and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in the USA. If you are going to find architectural research anywhere, you will find it here. For each academic, we counted his or her references in the two vast library databases each institution maintains. This gave a research score for each person. We then calculated the median research score for each school. That is, the typical research score of an academic at that school.
Much more information can be found in the 2005 report.
2007 significant methodology changes
We used an Author search rather than a Keyword search with the RIBA database, to bring it into line with the Avery search.
In a very important move, we also discarded our previous Research Intensity measure for a simpler and more transparent indicator: the median research score. All statistics is a sleight of hand, and all we can do is bring you what we believe is the fairest way to rank a school as a research performer. We believe that the new measure, the median research score, does that best.
The numerical values of the 2007 report are therefore not comparable to the 2005 report.
Schools not included
We did not count professors emeritus (emerita!), visitors, studio professors (in the North American system) and other obvious blow-ins. Disregarding these people does not disadvantage a school: on the contrary it acts in their school's favour, since they are not expected to conduct research.
The table below shows the schools we had to ignore completely for the reasons cited.
| Nation | University | Reason |
| Aus | Charles Darwin University | Does not offer professional degree |
| Aus | University of Canberra | No list of academics |
| Can | Ryerson University | Does not offer professional degree |
| Can | Université de Montréal | Not primarily Anglophone |
| Can | Université Laval | Not primarily Anglophone |
| NZ | Otago Polytechnic | No list of academics |
| RSA | Technikon Witwatersrand | No site or unreachable |
| RSA | University of KwaZulu-Natal | No list of academics |
| RSA | University of Pretoria | No site or unreachable |
| UK | De Montfort University | No list of academics |
| UK | Nottingham Trent University | No list of academics |
| UK | University of Brighton | No list of academics |
| UK | University of East London | No list of academics |
| UK | University of Huddersfield | No list of academics |
| UK | University of Portsmouth | No list of academics |
| USA | Boston Architectural College | Outside university system |
| USA | Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture | Outside university system |
| USA | Parsons Institute of Design | Could not identify eligible academics |
| USA | Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico | Could not identify eligible academics |
| USA | Roger Williams University | No list of academics |
| USA | Savannah College of Art and Design | Could not identify eligible academics |
| USA | Southern California Institute of Architecture | Outside university system |
| USA | Universidad de Peurto Rico | Not primarily Anglophone |
| USA | University of Hartford | Could not identify eligible academics |
| USA | University of Nevada, Las Vegas | No site or unreachable |
| USA | University of South Florida | No list of academics |
| USA | Woodbury University | No site or unreachable |
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Schools not counted in the 2007 research rankings. No list of academics: School did not list who worked there. Could not identify eligible academics: Staff {faculty} listed, but unable to identify those satisfying our eligibility criteria. Not primarily Anglophone: Schools whose staff published primarily in languages unlikely to be counted by our library databases. Outside university system: Schools that do not claim to conduct university-quality research as a major mission. |
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