Measure What You Treasure: Elevating the Work of Architects in the Academy

Abstract

In 1981, Tom Wolfe offered an answer to a question posed by this special issue of JAE: what is the value of the built work of architects in the academy? How do architecture schools, or “compounds” as Wolfe called them, value those faculty who collaborate with clients, consultants, and contractors to get designs built? Describing the rise of theorists over practitioners in postwar schools, Wolfe argued:

Keyword:

• architecture

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Notes

Acknowledgments

At the University of Oklahoma, Ernest Abrogar provided key insight into the ways in which university rankings are derived. Kendall Nicholson of ACSA, Angela Person of OU, and Christine Theodoropoulos of Cal Poly provided feedback and support.

Notes

1 Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981), 96-97, 103. I’m grateful to Ernest Abrogar, Kendall Nicholson, Angela Person, and Christine Theodoropoulos for their help and feedback on this essay.

2 It is worth noting that Academic Analytics, a private company, does track a wide variety of awards in architecture including all ACSA, EDRA, ARCC, and AIA awards. Thus, the problem is not the actual tracking; the problem is convincing organizations to include these awards in their ranking metrics.

3 See for example Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Charlotte V. Kuh, and James A. Voytuk, eds., “A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States,” (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2011), accessed June 15, 2020. https://grants.nih.gov/training/research_doctorates.pdf.

4 “Membership Policy,” Association of American Universities, accessed June 15, 2020. https://www.aau.edu/who-we-are/membership-policy.

5 See: https://www.ou.edu/research-norman/statistics/dashboards.

6 See for example John V. Lombardi, Craig W. Abbey, and Diane D. Craig, “The Top American Research Universities: 2018 Annual Report,” (Amherst, MA, and Gainesville, FL: The Center for Measuring University Performance, 2019), https://mup.umass.edu/sites/default/files/annual_report_2018.pdf.

7 “Mission,” The Center for Measuring University Performance, 2018, accessed June 15, 2020. https://mup.umass.edu/content/about.

8 Email correspondence with CMUP research director Craig Abbey, March 12, 2020. For more on CMUP, see https://mup.umass.edu/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Pilat

Stephanie Z. Pilat is the Director of the Division of Architecture in the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma. Pilat is a designer and writer whose teaching and research examines points of intersection between politics and architecture. Her first book, Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era (Routledge, 2016), told the story of an Italian postwar housing program that activated the design and construction process for social aims. Pilat recently co-edited The Routledge Companion Guide to Fascist Italian Architecture and Urbanism: Reception and Legacy (Routledge, 2020) with Professor Kay Bea Jones. At OU she leads the American School Project, which is re-examining the legacy of Bruce Goff and Herb Greene.