MIT Ranked #2 Among US Architecture Schools

A Sign of the School’s Ongoing Revitalization
According to Architect Magazine, MIT has been ranked #2 among graduate schools of architecture in the United States, reflecting the school's significant revitalization of its design programs in recent years. In 2007 and 2005, MIT was ranked #4; in 2006, #8; and in 2004, #5.
Tremendous changes in the school have been spearheaded in the past few years by Dean Adèle Naudé Santos, appointed in 2004, and architecture department head Yung Ho Chang, appointed in 2005. Under their leadership, a number of new faculty have been hired - including, most recently, tenured professors Rahul Mehrotra and Nader Tehrani, two very highly-regarded practitioners and educators - and in the spring and fall of 2008 the department will welcome still more high-profile architects/scholars to the faculty.
Meanwhile, a new curriculum for the Master of Architecture program is being implemented this fall and the architecture department's other degree programs are also being reexamined and refined. Those programs include the Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Science in Art and Design; Masters of Science in Architecture Studies, in Building Technology and in Visual Studies; and PhDs in Building Technology, in Design and Computation and in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture. Dual degrees are also offered.
As the school moves further into the future, it will continue to encourage interdisciplinary research and education, a trademark of the school, and to emphasize diversity in the faculty and student body. Chang also aims to integrate further the discipline groups within the department - building technology; computation; design (including urbanism); history, theory and criticism; and visual arts.
As part of a school-wide effort, new studio space has been created and most studios are being consolidated on the main campus. Construction has also begun on a major new facility for the school designed by Fumihiko Maki, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1993. Adjacent to and part of the school's legendary Media Lab, the new building will host new design labs, the architecture department's visual arts program and its Center for Advanced Visual Studies. The space will feature an open, atelier-style architecture designed to foster collaboration among all the school's divisions as well as with other divisions of MIT.
The ranking reported in Architect was the result of a poll that surveyed 130 offices of architectural firms, 46 deans of architecture schools and 740 students. The participating firms included many of the country's leaders who, collectively, employ more than 100,000 people. The survey was conducted by The Greenway Group for the Design Futures Council and the journal DesignIntelligence.
Trailing MIT in the survey were Columbia, Cornell, Washington University in St. Louis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, UC/Berkeley, Clemson University, Rice and the University of Texas at Austin. Runners-up were Princeton, UVA, Yale, Kansas State and Syracuse University. The #1 slot went to a school up the street from MIT that shall remain unnamed.
New Graduates Bring New Ideas About Sustainability
According to Architect, 'Increasingly, students are more knowledgeable than more experienced practitioners about green building and technologies such as BIM. This is bringing about a phenomenon known as 'up-mentoring', in which interns and architects in their 20s and 30s have more-valuable roles in professional practice than ever before, helping baby boomer and even Generation X colleagues keep pace with technology. Firms using recent graduates solely for AutoCAD production are sorely underutilizing their talent. When our survey asked practitioners if their firms got an infusion of new ideas about sustainability from recent hires, 57 percent said yes, and that response is expected to increase.'