The Site Map of Archsoc.com

People

• The hypocrisy of sustainable design. A lot of rich people want others to pay for their sins.
• Why architects don't like other people.
• Why architects dress differently. There's a lot of bowties out there. Here's why.
• Some thoughts on why architects take themselves too seriously. They really should get a sense of humour.
• The Eisenman file: Peter Eisenman copycat bully boy. Way back in the 1990's the noted American architect Peter Eisenman was hit by some stinging criticism from an academic. Bereft of any ideas himself, he stole a particularly childish rebuke lock-stock-and-barrel from his intellectual guru Jacques Derrida.

Australian people

• The Seidler file: A look at why male architects just love tall buildings. We whack Harry Seidler as a typical architectural penis-waver.
• The Seidler file: How Harry tried to bully a pig-loving publican.
• The Seidler file: Architectural aristocrat.
• The Seidler file: Glass-jaw bully.
• Our take on the Australian Architecture Association, followed by our explanation of why they are that way.
• The people's architect. Some thoughts on how affluent, intelligent and cultured people can delude themselves that they are one of the ‘people’.

Profession

• New We look at how architects' incomes have fared over the past decades in the United States of America.
• New Women in architecture: our speculations.
• New or updated BArch, MArch, DArch. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't have a university {college} degree. So why do North American architects now want you to get a doctoral degree to practise in the USA or Canada? The Aussie schools are also migrating to the masters qualification. We call it credential inflation.
• The profession wants all of the status, but none of the responsibility that comes with a university education.
• How to become a famous architect without building anything. If Zaha Hadid could do it, so can you.
• Queen of the arts. The architects' professional associations are world-class snobs. Some examples.
• The name of the architect. Architects shoot themselves in the head when they try to limit who can use the title, and Daniel Libeskind exemplifies why. We also have a swipe at those Nobel parvenus, the Pritzkers.
• Why the privileged find it easier to become a great architect. It's all a matter of class.
• Architecture as grand erections.
• Some concerns about the decline of the occupation of architecture.
• A few words about the legal regulation of architects.
• Americans love free markets. So does Dr Garry. But when it comes to the professions, the USA would not have much to learn from Joseph Stalin: eliminate competitors, monopolise, control, regulate. Check out why we think American architects are the world's last great socialists.
• A look at the current brouhaha between American architects and interior designers.
• On the coming crisis in the architecture profession.
• Architects take on the building designers.

The Australian profession

• The New South Wales Architects Act 2003. This is a major step towards the rational reform of regulating architects in Australia. We welcome it.
• Are you looking to work as an architect in Australia? Our advice.
• A discussion of the investigation into the Australian Architects' Acts. You can also read excerpts from the hearings into the Architects Acts.
• For our pungent opinion about the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and their minions.

Education

• British architecture academics piss themselves. The UK government wants to know where its money is going. The British architecture professors don't want to tell them.
• If you are interested in one of our least popular ideas, try why we think that architecture should not be taught in universities.
• How the internet made architecture students stupid.
• The mature age or adult student in architecture school. It can be fun, but also daunting.
• The easy life of the part-time academic {professor}.
• So, you want to study architecture? Some of your questions answered about getting into school, surviving it, and becoming a rich and famous architect.
• How happy are architecture students?
• How the schools brainwash their students, and why the students love it.
• How you can succeed in architecture school.
• Some ways to be a brilliant architectural academic.
• Architecture as a discipline. Does architecture have academic integrity?
• A history of architectural education.
• What we believe are rampant fallacies about architectural education.
• The very short life of the discipline of architectural science: killed by its own founder.

Rating the schools

• Ranking the world's architecture schools as research institutions: the 2007 results.
  • 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.
  • International comparisons
  • 2007 ratings for the USA
  • 2007 ratings for the UK
  • 2007 ratings for Canada
  • 2007 ratings for Australia
  • 2007 ratings for South Africa
  • 2007 ratings for New Zealand, Eire, Hong Kong and Singapore
• Reactions to our ratings
  • University of New South Wales writes
  • RMIT University writes
  • Boston Architectural College (formerly Center) writes

Australian education

• Studying at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). A critic's attempt to save the jobs of her chums didn't work, and even our own suggestion was ignored.
• Australia's best universities.
• Culling the Australian professors. Our plan to reform the architecture schools.
• A short guide to studying architecture in Australia: our 13-year study. We have a summary in chart form.
• Ranking Australia's architecture schools in research.
• Studying architecture at the University of South Australia. Inspired by one student's comments.
• Studying architecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Sydney. With much information from Dr Garry's many years there.
• The growing scandal of entrenched corruption at the highest levels of Australia's universities.

The theory

• Freakonomics is a wildly successfull media enterprise, turning a dry-as-dust economic theory into a sexy money-making machine. As a good Bourdivin student, we have our own take.
• Without a doubt, the most important work in architectural sociology in more than a generation is Garry's book The Favored Circle. We hate false modesty, don't you?
• The first in a series on the rhythms of architectural history.
• [pdf file] ‘Downclassing the Architect’. A paper invited by Harvard Design Magazine but not published by it. Dr Garry has no love of this journal, and no wish to write for it in the future. You can download the original submission. It isn't brilliant, but there is some quite useful stuff there, nonetheless, especially from Garry's research into the economics of architecture over the past thirty years.
• [pdf file] ‘The Invisible’: A paper invited by Thresholds. Garry's paper ‘The Invisible’ published in the December 1999 edition of Thresholds (19:54-56), the journal of MIT's Department of Architecture. You can download the original, longer, and much better version for free!

The rest

• Why computer-aided architectural design failed to live up to it's hype.

Our ratbag file

• Ms Leila Martin, claiming to be associated with the University of South Australia, and using the monicker Lulusticks sent us a nasty email.
• Then the school of architecture at the University of South Australia threatened to suppress the Key Centre: because one of their own students whacked Dr Garry! Hey, you work it out. We still haven't.
• Here is our response to their threats.
• Rad vomits.
• A not-very-bright student wittles.
• New A disgruntled ‘Marcus Lafond’ writes that we have deceived him.