World’s best universities for architecture revealed

The twelfth edition of QS World University Rankings by Subject offers independent comparative analysis of the performance of 230 Architecture schools across 47 countries.

The pre-eminent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) takes first-place while Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands leapfrogs University College London (UCL) to take second.

The Architecture rankings can be found here.

In total, 38 Architecture departments around the world have improved their rank this year, while 125 have remained unchanged and 49 have declined. The world’s most improved Architecture school is China’s Tianjin University, which jumps 13 positions to place 37^th globally.

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile is best-in-subject for Latin America placing 39^th in the world, while the National University of Singapore takes the top spot for Asia in 6^th. ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology is Continental Europe’s second-best university. Third in Europe is Italy’s Politecnico di Milano.

The US is the world’s best country to study Architecture for the number of top-100 programs, followed by the UK in second and Australia in third.

MIT remains in pole position year-on-year with a perfect score for Academic Reputation – determined by QS’s exclusive Academic Survey – this reflects MIT’s world-class research and its ability to communicate its research to the field.

Delft University of Technology shows excellent quality of research, outstripping MIT and UCL in the H-index indicator – this gauges the impact of an institutions research within a field of study. Tsinghua University and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University are the world’s best Architecture research institutions by this metric. 

Harvard University tops QS’s Employer Reputation table for Architecture with another perfect score. This is followed by Manchester School of Architecture which breaks into the world’s top-10, overall.

Architecture highlights from other universities include:

• Manchester School of Architecture makes strides in the rankings, gaining four positions to land in 7^th. 
• Newcastle University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign break into the world’s top-50 (48^th and 50^th).
• National Taipei University of Technology breaks into the top-100.

Some locations experience regional success in Architecture. For example:

• The Netherlands improves all its listed Architecture departments: Eindhoven University of Technology breaks into the top-50 (45^th) and Wageningen University & Research makes the top-100 (51-100 band).
• Spain is another regional success story in the field, with all its ranked schools both improving and making the top-100: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya BarcelonaTech places 19^th, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid lands in 27^th (up 10 places) and Universitat Politècnica de València breaks into the top-100 (51-100 bracket).

• Malaysia also makes gains in the field. Its two ranked faculties, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Malaya both break into the top-100 (51-100).

The rankings, compiled by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, provide independent comparative analysis on the performance of 15,200 individual university programs, taken by students at 1543 universities which can be found in 88 locations across the world, across 51 academic disciplines and five broad Faculty Areas. They are part of the annual QS World University Rankings portfolio, which was consulted over 147 million times in 2021, and covered 96,000 times by media and institutions.