America's Best Architecture & Design Schools

DesignIntelligence has released the 2009 edition of America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools. Inside you’ll find charts, graphs, data, analysis, and listings of architectural, interior, landscape, and industrial design programs across the nation–a must-have for students and hiring managers.

The research that informs the content of this report, conducted in mid-2008, surveyed design professionals with direct experience in hiring recent graduates. The report ranks the top 10 programs in each of the disciplines, both undergraduate and graduate, and answers some very specific questions about the quality and value of today’s design education.

I am particularly glad to see increased evidence of coursework on integrated sustainable design and the growing recognition of sustainability and climate change as emerging concerns for the design profession. Responders overwhelmingly agreed that their firms are benefitting from an infusion of new ideas about sustainability from recent graduate new hires. Woo hoo!

There are also useful guides for students on how to evaluate undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as the current and future state of the profession. A timely article by Jim Cramer "Looking Around the Corner and Seeing a Future" poses seven questions that every firm needs to answer to deal with today’s tumultuous economy. Hint: it revolves around the time-honored concept of “change or die.”

This may just be the best holiday present you can give yourself.

America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools 2009
Published by Greenway Communications LLC
$39.95
greenway.us/bookstore