The Top 10 Schools

When it comes to architecture school, anyone with a caste in the discipline already knows the drill: late nights and a lifetime's beginning on caffeine (or stronger stimulants). Of course, that's not the flick painted by the schools' literature and websites. These materials all tout what must be today's Big Three descriptors: sustainable, digital, and interdisciplinary. ("Those are pretty standard buzzwords," admits University of Michigan dean Doug Kelbaugh.) We've tried to scratch below the surface of the top programs—both undergraduate and graduate—by talking to deans and directors and even past perusing Archinect's School Blog Project (archinect.com/schoolblog/alphabetize.php) to become a feel for what's really going on at these elite institutions. Here'due south what we establish.

1. VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC Plant AND STATE UNIVERSITY, BLACKSBURG, VA.; School of Architecture + Pattern; Higher of Architecture & Urban Studies Director: Scott Poole
Prominent Alums: Suzanne Lovell, Lee Polisano (president, Kohn Pedersen Fox)
Bragging Rights: At Virginia Tech, freshmen in architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design, and interior pattern are intermingled in studios where together they learn bones design for the entire year. Furthermore, Poole says, "We put our near experienced teachers with the freshmen."

William Staffield

2. CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y.College of Architecture, Art & Planning
Dean: Mohsen Mostafavi (approachable)
Prominent Alums: Edmund Bacon, Peter Eisenman, Arthur Gensler, Richard Meier
Website Buzzwords: "simulacrum," "evocation"
Bragging Rights: Cornell'southward four-yr course in architecture was the beginning in the nation when it was established during the 1870s, and the electric current five-yr programme dates to the 1920s.

iii. SYRACUSE University, SYRACUSE; N.Y. Schoolhouse of Compages
Dean: Mark Robbins
New Edifice: The Warehouse, Gluckman Mayner Architects, 2006
Prominent Alums: Bruce Fowle, Richard Gluckman, David Rockwell
Website Buzzwords: "rigorous," "dialogue," "integrated"
Town and Gown: Fourteen building projects are currently under way in the 140,000-person city of Syracuse. Last summer there was enough going on for students to stick effectually and work with faculty. "That was an old tradition of the schoolhouse that hadn't happened [in many years]," according to Robbins.

iv. CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF.; Architecture Department
Department Head: Henri de Hahn
Bragging Rights: A recent, unrestricted $60 meg bequest by an anonymous donor who once attended (but did not complete) the architecture programme figures to transform information technology in equally-yet-unknown ways.

Andrew Higley

v. University OF CINCINNATI, CINCINNATI, OHIO.; College of Design, Compages, Fine art, and Planning
Acting Dean: Robert Probst
Notorious Building: the Aronoff Center for Design and Art, Peter Eisenman, 1996
Bragging Rights: UC's co-op program puts students to work. When you lot call the college and are put on hold, a recorded student enthuses, "Having existent work experience will wait so sweet on my résumé!"

half-dozen. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, AUSTIN, TEXAS; Schoolhouse of Architecture
Dean: Frederick Steiner
Prominent Alums: Michael Dennis, Reed Kroloff, Craig Dykers
Bragging Rights: While every school is jumping on the greenish bandwagon, Steiner notes that Austin was an early on incubator. "The Austin Greenish Edifice Initiative laid the groundwork for LEED and involved our kinesthesia, students, and alumni," he says, adding that first-year architecture students have the best academic credentials of all incoming UT freshmen.

7. CARNEGIE MELLON Academy, PITTSBURGH, PA.; School of Architecture
Head: Laura Lee
Prominent Alum: Roger Duffy (design partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill)
The Campus: Carnegie Mellon's architecture school shares a turn-of-the-century Henry Hornbostel building with art, design, drama, and music. The newest venture at CMU is a six-story construction dubbed "Building every bit Power Plant." "We're proposing a building that'south not only zero-energy, but will really provide power to the campus," says Lee. It'south slated to terminate in 2010.

Ray Streeter

eight. KANSAS Country University, MANHATTAN, KAN.; Section of Architecture; College of Architecture, Planning and Design
Department Head: Peter Magyar
Bragging Rights: The college's quarter-century–onetime, award-winning journal Oz proves that in that location's whimsy in the heartland.
Expiration Date: One thousand-State's time on this list will be brusque-lived. The undergraduate compages program is being phased out every bit of 2011.

9. PENNSYLVANIA State UNIVERSITY, STATE COLLEGE, PA.; Section of Compages; School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Department Caput: Daniel Willis
New Building: Stuckeman Family Building for the Schoolhouse of Compages and Landscape Architecture, Overland Partners, 2005
Bragging Rights: Visiting lecturers often comment on the high level of craft in student work, co-ordinate to Willis.

9. PRATT Constitute, BROOKLYN, Due north.Y.
Schoolhouse of Architecture
Dean: Thomas Hanrahan
New Edifice: Higgins Hall Center Section, Steven Holl Architects, 2005
Website Buzzwords: "conceptual possibilities," "flexible typologies," "complex ecology of interests"
Snack-Food Disaster: In 1996, a vending automobile caught burn during a renovation of Pratt'southward existing, Victorian architecture school edifice, prompting Hanrahan to hire Holl.
The Campus: Hanrahan recently put his own stamp on the Pratt campus, designing the brand-new Juliana Curran Terian Pattern Center Pavilion with his partner, Victoria Meyers.

Michaele Pride Director, School of Architecture and Interior Design University of Cincinnati
Craig Cameron Olsen Michaele Pride Director, School of Architecture and Interior Blueprint University of Cincinnati

Michaele Pride
Director, School of Compages and Interior Design, University of Cincinnati

For Michaele Pride, social responsibility is paramount to the practice and study of compages: "We're non doing our task if we're not responding to bug and questions that are in our own backyard." Every bit a educatee at Arizona State University and so at Harvard University, she researched the sociopolitical realities of urban design. She put that inquiry into practise for 7 years as principal of the Los Angeles firm re: architecture and led the volunteer efforts of the blueprint community in L.A.—her hometown—following the riots of 1992.

When she had the opportunity to motility to Cincinnati in 2003 (from Lexington, Ky., where she had directed the University of Kentucky's Downtown Design Center), Pride jumped at it. "It'southward significant for me that the school ties to the profession," she says. "Having been a practitioner myself, I was drawn past the curriculum, the faculty, and the co-op program."

The Academy of Cincinnati was the birthplace of cooperative teaching in 1906. Today, undergraduate students in architecture complete half dozen quarters of professional piece of work experience before graduation. Not surprisingly, they emerge highly employable: According to the website of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, of which Pride'south schoolhouse is a part, more than than 800 U.S. architecture firms rank Cincinnati as their start overall institution for recruitment. The graduate program at UC has long been a staple of DesignIntelligence's all-time schools list, but this year is the first since 2004 that its undergraduate program cracks the Top 10.

Pride believes that the schoolhouse's connected strength relies on preparing students for an ever-shifting workplace. "If we focus on imparting a set of skills, those skill sets volition apace be outdated," she says. "The most crucial thing we can practice is aid our students to leave here asking the correct questions."  -- Elizabeth A. Evitts

B.ARCH. STUDENTS AT A GLANCE STATISTICS FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL ACCREDITING BOARD Based on responses from 45 accredited B.Arch. programs nationwide
Catalogtree B.ARCH. STUDENTS AT A GLANCE STATISTICS FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHITECTURAL ACCREDITING BOARD Based on responses from 45 accredited B.Arch. programs nationwide

DEANS ON ...

Elevation Three Emerging Concerns in the design professions

  1. Sustainability in Pedagogy and Practice
  2. BIM and Other Project Commitment Models
  3. Integrated Practice

Most Important Teaching Approaches (ranked in order of importance)

  1. Practice Application
  2. Theory
  3. Technical Training
  4. Internships/Co-ops