Which is the best architecture school?

For your consideration – a poll which humbly requests your opinion as to which is the best architecture school.

Architecture school is popular despite recession

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/20/architecture-architecture

It may seem paradoxical – yet as the recession bites and building projects grind to a halt, a record number of British students are applying to study architecture. With so many architects underemployed, or plain unemployed, surely these legions of young people must be either oblivious to what’s going on around them, or else slightly mad?

Who wants to be an architecture student?

A compelling article  from the TIMES ONLINE, discusses the current situation for architecture students in the UK, which also applies to the U.S.

From the article:  “So, what do you go into architecture for? Iain Borden, the head at Bartlett, puts much of the rise down to the Grand Designs factor. “Architecture is much more visible nowadays,” he says. “It’s on the TV. Icon projects are a factor. Students see them on adverts or on holiday. People such as Norman Foster are household names.”

Allen agrees. “We get students at 18 who all like Foster and the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Santiago Calatrava. Architecture is a bit cool. But it’s also a career, so the parents like it too. Everyone’s happy.”

Super Nafta Land

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/super-nafta-land.html

An architectural thesis from Rice University:

This border region is “a dynamic, hybridized, and rapidly growing regional zone,” Gelles writes, “known as ‘Amexica’ or the ‘third space.’”
He continues, outlining the broader political intentions of the project:

The emergence and potential of this “third space” as an economic engine and potential immigration buffer has been jeopardized by US policies towards Mexico such as the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which insists on understanding the border as a line, rather than its reality as a blurred zone of transition. This project proposes building a thickened, connective infrastructural corridor landscape to unite the sister cities (in place of the divisive 700 miles of fence currently under construction by the US government) and generate the resources and conditions for an independent, neutral border nation to emerge.