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Rice School of Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Are School Rankings a Thing from the Past? 16 Architecture Deans Criticize these Surveys in Official Statement

In a letter published on MIT's School of Architecture and Planning’s website, 16 deans from prominent architecture schools in the U.S, explain their position to stop participating in the annual survey that ranks universities. "Design education is not a popularity contest. Although generally our schools have been highly ranked in past DesignIntelligence reports and benefitted from the attention, we believe that it is time to stop participating", declares the statement signed by scholars, deans, and department chairs of MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, Rice, and UCLA, to name a few.

Stating clearly their position to boycott future ranking, the decision came after two years of informal discussions where the methodologies used behind these academic surveys were questioned, as well as their consequences. In fact, the letter adds that "however well-intentioned they may be, we believe that the DI rankings have the potential to create a disservice to the public". 

Call for Submissions: PLAT 6.0 Absence

What does it mean for design to disappear? Absence, often seen as the result of a destructive force, may in fact be productive. While presence implies creation, absence promises possibilities.

Architecture, despite being closely associated with ‘creation’, in fact oscillates between the construction of the ever new and the destruction of the same ones as time, new trends, and advances in technology render them obsolete. The line between nostalgic monumentalization and the inevitable reality of demolition is drawn to establish the life cycle of any building. In today’s design culture that is as impatient as it is impermanent, we

Rice University Fellow Creates Half House that Pushes Boundaries and Challenges Perspectives of Light and Space

Visiting Wortham Fellow at the Rice School of Architecture Michelle Chang has created A,B 1:2, a twisted “half house” installation in the university’s jury room. Built at a half scale, the project superimposes and bisects two simple cubes, playing with light and shade through skewed windows in order to demonstrate how architects and artists think about space, as well as how drawings and renderings translate into physical constructions.

Call for Submissions - PLAT 5.0: License

License can bind and it can liberate. A fantasy of disciplinary finitude, a professional architectural license bestows liability and autonomy in equal measure. In an abstract sense, to take license is to disregard established limits, to undermine the very idea of a closed and comprehensive disciplinarity that sustains licensure.

If licentiousness is derived from license, how do architects leverage this polemical condition to balance - or not - responsibility and invention? How does architecture's periphery change when license ceases to be a telos/terminus? What kind of authorities, criteria, and protocols emerge to determine whether an architect is fit to practice?

2013 Sally Walsh Lecture: Moving House / Jeanne Gang

On March 26th, architect Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects will discuss how housing can evolve in multiple ways to address contemporary challenges in "Moving House," delivered as the Rice Design Alliance's 2013 Sally Walsh Lecture at the The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Dedicated to "honoring Walsh’s groundbreaking foray into modern design by bringing cutting edge designers to Houston," the lecture is sponsored in collaboration with the Rice School of Architecture, the AIA Houston Chapter, and the Architecture Center Houston Foundation.