The QS Worldwide University Rankings are out and have declared the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the best university for architecture in the world. The global ranking cited MIT’s top performance in architecture education.
According to a report on design website Dezeen, the institute garnered 96.5 points, which gave it the top rank in architecture in the world. The QS System measures institutions according to their credibility within the academic world, employers, the quantity of international students and staff. It also takes into account the ratio of students to faculty members as well as the amount of citations that referenced the works of each university in their published works within the previous year.
MIT’s School Architecture and Planning has earned a reputation for combining different fields including research, media, technology and urban design. The department has a Media Laboratory which started out in 1980 and the Senseable City Lab. The Media Laboratory concentrates on the physical and virtual worlds while the Senseable City Lab handles research projects that explore studies on the future of urban development and its relationship to digital technology. MIT’s roster of faculty members is made up of well-known designers. Its former professors include Alvar Aalto, Buckminster Fuller, Louis Kahn and Kenzo Tange.
Following MIT in the top 100 architecture schools are the Bartlett School of Architecture, London; Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, University of California, Berkley, and Harvard University. Universities in Asia also ranked high with the National University of Singapore in sixth place, followed by Tsinghia University, Beijing and the University of Tokyo.
The best overall art and design school in the world, according to the QS Worldwide University Rankings, is London’s Royal College of Art. Architecture, design and art schools from the US and the UK made up the majority of the top 100 schools.
QS started publishing university rankings internationally around 10 years ago. Its website also releases the full results in its interactive website. In an interview about university performance trends, QS said, “Many types of user read our rankings, from education ministers to schoolteachers.” However, QS’ primary goal is to provide compelling information to mobile students. “Since 2004, the number of people studying outside their home country has nearly doubled and we know that rankings are a prime source of information for these ambitious people.”
