"Some schools of architecture could use a good architect"
By Thomas Fisher, The Chronicle Review, March 7, 2008

Dean Tom Fisher penning an overview of a new book he co-edited, Designing for Designers: Lessons Learned From Schools of Architecture (Fairchild Books, 2007), writes that many architecture students -- like the proverbial schoemaker's child who goes barefoot -- learn the best practices of their discipline in some of the worst buildings on their campuses.

The book's authors found that the three architecture schools whose building exteriors received the highest rankings "respected the context of the surrounding campus."

"Is architecture evolutionary, adapting to its context, or revolutionary, demonstrating new ways of being? Should buildings seek consensus within a community or challenge peoples' views of the world? As in other fields, the discipline of architecture has cycled back and forth between these positions, now so rapidly that both views often coexist within a single department (and are sometimes held by the same person)."

Fisher writes that while problems exist, their solutions are readily at hand.