The Site Map of Architectural Blatherations

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.
• Architecture is run by grumpy prima donnas.

Australian people

• The Harry Seidler files: A look at why male architects just love tall buildings. We whack Harry Seidler as a typical architectural penis-waver.
• The Harry Seidler files: How Harry tried to cajole a pig-loving publican.
• The Harry Seidler files: Architectural aristocrat.
• The Harry Seidler files: Glass-jaw bully.
• Our take on the Australian Architecture Association, followed by our explanation of why they are that way.

Profession

• Are architects disrespected? We look at how architects' incomes have fared over the past decades in the United States of America.
• Why women in architecture get a bad deal
  • Women in architecture: part 1: our first thoughts.
  • Women in architecture: part 2: it's all about big swinging dicks.
• 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 Dame Zaha 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 pompous halfwits at the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia think they know something. They don't.
• How we brought about the New South Wales Architects Act 2003. This was a major step towards the rational reform of regulating architects in Australia.
• A discussion of the investigation into the Australian Architects' Acts. You can also read excerpts from the hearings into the Architects Acts.
• Our pungent opinion about the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) and their minions.
• The RAIA rebranded itself for a bold new world.

Education

• British architecture academics pissed 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 professor.
• 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

• An introduction to our quadrennial ranking of the world's architecture schools as research institutions.
  • DesignIntelligence vs Dr Garry. We enter the debate concerning Design Intelligence rankings of American architecture schools, versus our own
  • Comparisons between the 2005 and 2009/2013 rankings
  • 2009/2013 ratings for the USA
  • 2009/2013 ratings for the UK. This page also includes ratings and rankings from many other sources.
  • 2009/2013 ratings for Canada
  • 2009/2013 ratings for Australia
  • 2009/2013 ratings for South Africa
  • 2009/2013 ratings for New Zealand, Eire, Hong Kong and Singapore
  • Rating the individual professors as researchers. For the first time, we provide information on every single academic in the architecture schools. Derived from our 2009 survey data.
  • International comparisons
  • Our methodology

Australian education

• Sydney Uni's Dean John Redmond got caught out. The Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney, John Redmond, was caught out violating basic ethical rules.
• Curious case of Monash university. A new school of architecture in Australia claimed to be accredited. Other sources said it is not. We received no response from Monash to our many queries.
• Culling the Australian professors. Our plan to reform the architecture schools.
• Their students rate the Australian architecture schools. We have a summary in chart form.
• Ranking Australia's architecture schools in research.
• The growing scandal of entrenched corruption at the highest levels of Australia's universities.

The theory

• Architectural sociology today. We look back on the exciting developments in architectural sociology accomplished after the publication of The Favored Circle liberated the discipline from the domination of Robert Gutman's naive theories.
• The academic publishing rort. A new journal, Architecture and Culture, has the best of intentions, but shoots itself in the head. We explain why.
• The most important work in architectural sociology in more than a generation was Garry's book The Favored Circle, published way back in 1998. We hate false modesty, don't you? To catch up on what has happened since, you should read Paul Jones' The Sociology of Architecture (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2011).
• The first in a series on the rhythms of architectural history.
• Downclassing the Architect. 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.
• How the Invisible Stays That Way. A paper published in Thresholds, the journal of MIT's Department of Architecture. This is the original, longer, and much better version.
• Freakonomics is a wildly successful media enterprise, turning a dry-as-dust screw-the-poor economic church (rational action theory) into a sexy money-making machine. As a solid Bourdivin student, we have our own take on the Freakonomics money-machine.

The rest

• Australia's best universities. How the Big Three rating systems (ARWU, THE World University Rankings and QS Topuniversities) rank Australia's universities.
• How IT stuffed the architecture profession.