Fenland Tech: Architectural Science in Postwar Cambridge

摘要

In the fall of 2004 the general board of the University of Cambridge recommended that the department of architecture be closed. Although others argued that financial pressures were to blame, the board stated that the recommendation was based purely on academic grounds, specifically "concerns within the University about aspects of the Department's research profile going back over two decades." The primary evidence of this was a weak (for Cambridge) rating by the 2001 national Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which influences the allocation of government funding. Opponents of the closure, including the new acting head of the department Marcial Echenique, argued that the assessment was flawed because it classed architecture as a science and failed to properly recognize the special type of research represented by design. In January 2005, after much criticism in the press, protests on campus, and a restructuring proposal from the department (that did focus full-time faculty on research), the general board agreed to leave the department open.