The Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London has finally been given taught-degree awarding powers (TDAP), allowing the influential school to grant degrees for the first time in its 170-year history. While the school is the oldest independent architecture school in the U.K. and internationally renowned as a pioneering educational institution, graduates of the AA could not, until now, receive academic degrees backed by the U.K. government. Nonetheless, the illustrious alumni list of the institution includes Pritzker Prize winners Rem Koolhaas, Richard Rogers, and Zaha Hadid among other big names.  The victory is a turning point for the AA, whose financial insecurity and an uncertain future was a major factor in pursuing accreditation earlier this year. The institution, which does not receive government funding, is reliant on student tuition dollars, particularly from foreign students whose visa status would remain on shaky ground as long as the school was unaccredited. While the road to gaining TDAP was years in the making, the school successfully petitioned the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education for the right this year.  "Without TDAP, the AA Diploma–widely known and internationally acclaimed – is not an academic award recognised by the UK government, and AA graduates regularly encounter challenges when returning home or to other overseas countries for the purposes of professional development or further academic study," explained Eva Franch i Gilabert, directors of the school, in an interview with Dezeen last year. Franch i Gilabert was elected to the directorial position in March 2018 after receiving the largest majority of any candidate in almost three decades.  Balancing the school’s finances and securing TDAP status was a major point of Franch i Gilabert’s administration. The decision to give degree-granting power is a much needed boon for the AA after the international architecture community protested staff cuts at the AA Files, the school’s journal, under the previous interim director. Their acceptance into the circle of official higher education institutions is also a sharp turn for the AA, which maintains a reputation for its cutting-edge and radical educational style. 

A year after protests rocked the architecture world over the Architectural Association’s (AA) decision to render a portion of its staff “redundant” and possibly shutter its venerated AA Files, the London school is preparing to publish its next issue of the journal. For the first time in the school’s 150-year history, the institution is also gearing up to award its own degrees.

In early 2018, the private school, under the administration of interim director Samantha Hardingham, moved to mark 16 jobs as redundant, in part due to what it cited as a massive increase in rent and the cost of renovating the school’s headquarters in Bedford Square. With five of the eight AA Files staff members cut, editor Tom Weaver resigned in protest and put the journal’s future in doubt.

It appears that hiring former Storefront for Art and Architecture director Eva Franch i Gilabert to lead the school has turned around their formerly precipitous financial situation. As the Architect’s Journal reports, Franch has pegged the school’s finances as “back on track” following a loss of $1 million in 2017.

Franch also confirmed that the next issue of the AA Files would be published sometime later this year under the direction of the journal’s new editor and AA instructor, Maria Shéhérazade Giudici.

The institution has also filed an application with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the U.K. agency responsible for maintaining the standards of higher education, for the right to award its own degrees. Pending an approval by the agency’s advisory committee on May 9, and then validation by the agency’s leading council, the AA would become a degree-granting institution for the first time in its history. While the school currently awards diplomas, they don’t carry the same legal certification as a recognized architectural degree.

Architect, educator, and author Kenneth Frampton has received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Frampton joins the ranks of past winners such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 2016, Phyllis Lambert in 2014, and Álvaro Siza Vieira in 2012. Born in London in 1930 and educated at the Architectural Association, Frampton has worked as an architect, critic, and historian, and taught at a number of vaunted schools over the course of his career. He’s perhaps most well-known for his 1980 work Modern Architecture: A Critical History, which has since become a seminal text in the field. Frampton has also taught consistently at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) since 1972. This year’s decision was made by the chair of the Board of La Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, with recommendations from the International Architecture Exhibition curators, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. "Through his work, Kenneth Frampton occupies a position of extraordinary insight and intelligence combined with a unique sense of integrity,” said Farrell and McNamara in a joint statement. “He stands out as the voice of truth in the promotion of key values of architecture and its role in society.  His humanistic philosophy in relation to architecture is embedded in his writing and he has consistently argued for this humanistic component throughout all the various ‘movements’ and trends often misguided in architecture in the 20th and 21st century.” "There is no student of the faculties of architecture who is unfamiliar with his Modern Architecture: A Critical History,” said Baratta in a press release. “The Golden Lion goes this year to a 'maestro,' and in this sense it also intended to be a recognition of the importance of the critical approach to the teaching of architecture.” Other than Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Frampton has authored numerous other influential books clarifying the internal language of the built environment, including Studies in Tectonic Culture, Labour, Work and Architecture, and A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form. Frampton will officially receive his award on Saturday, May 26, 1018, during the award ceremony and inauguration of the 16^th Venice Architecture Biennale. The event will open to the public at 10:00 AM and will be held in the Biennale’s headquarters of Ca’ Giustinian.

What are we to make of a recent survey that claims MIT, the Bartlett, and Delft University of Technology are the best architecture schools in the world?  This ranking, created by British-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also names Stanford, New York University, and University of California, Santa Barbara, as its top schools for architecture and these institutions don’t even have standalone schools of architecture. This assessment has received a great deal of attention on social media, particularly from those associated with the top schools. But what are we to make of a listing that does not even mention SCI-Arc or the Architectural Association in London? It also lists the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales ahead of Cornell University, and Kyoto University just ahead of Princeton and the University of Michigan. I have nothing against the schools that came out on top, nor am I trying to be chauvinistic by emphasizing U.S. universities, but one has to wonder about a list that puts King Saud University in Saudi Arabia ahead of Rice University in Houston. But what criteria did the QS use in establishing the ranking? First, this firm, which calls itself a “higher education marketing company” and one of the “three most influential university rankings in the world,” looked only at universities. This means that while QS surveyed “2,122 institutions across the globe, offering courses in architecture or the built environment,” schools like Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Union, or the Royal College of Art in London were not even considered for evaluation. QS asserts that its evaluation is based on four factors: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, and what it calls “H-Index citations.” An H-Index citation is a metric that attempts to “measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar.” It’s hard to learn more about the QS architecture ranking, and it seems rather sloppy and unscientific, but the firm also rates universities worldwide, and these rankings seem to line up fairly closely with its architecture list. Its top universities in the world are, in order, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London, University of Chicago, and the ETH Zurich. Interestingly, Yale University came in sixteenth in the QS world ranking of universities, but its architecture school ranked a lowly 100th in the world behind the University of Kebangsaan in Malaysia, Texas A&M University, and Monash University in Australia. This QS ranking seems tone deaf to the real qualities that make a great architecture school, even while admitting the value and importance of PhD-level scholarship and research. Architecture is a craft as much as a liberal art, and therefore requires its teaching institutions to transmit a particular set of real-world skills that have to be mastered by students. For this reason, a great lab with CNC milling and robotic machines is important to contemporary design education. The students’ ability to work with their hands, render a plan, and be able to create a working section is as important as learning the history and theory of the discipline. In addition, the realities of the marketplace mean that students need the mentoring of professional working architects who make up the bulk of most design schools. The students who come out of great design schools need the refined focus of building culture, and this has been true since the École des Beaux-Arts and its workshop intern practice that is unique to the field. Furthermore, today’s architecture graduates don’t always find employment in traditional architecture offices—let alone go on to pursue PhDs as the QS ranking would suggest. In the words of cultural critic Brian Holmes, “designers, architects, and other actors in the creative fields must be multidisciplinary, open to collaboration, and motivated to find and initiate these often-amorphous work arrangements.” You can only get these in a full-blown school of architecture, and this need not be a university. There are many problems with the QS evaluation that undermines its usefulness, but one, in particular, is its disregard for educational differences between undergraduate and graduate programs—not to mention overlooking the educational content in two- and four-year degree and non-degree programs. The DesignIntelligence ranking of schools in the United States may also have shortcomings, but at least it gets the finer points of undergrad and graduate education and considers them. It identifies Cornell as the best undergraduate program in the country and the Harvard Graduate School of Design as the best graduate program, and that assessment seems more in line with real-world architecture in 2018. Finally, it may make sense to consider architecture education in a national context, rather than a worldwide one, since the licensing protocols and building requirements are so different from nation to nation.  Sorry, MIT, but this QS ranking is so myopically concerned with academic citations as to be nearly worthless as a guide for what comprises quality architecture education in all its 21st-century variety and subtlety.

London’s Architectural Association is undergoing the sort of dramatic change all schools of architecture periodically experience. They will be taking on a new director in the fall, Eva Franch i Gilabert, who will bring a new culture and pedagogy, and parting ways with their current leader, Samantha Hardingham. Now Mark Cousins, one of its most distinguished lecturers, is ending the Friday afternoon lectures that he has been delivering for thirty years. He plans to focus on putting these weekly talks onto the written page. These talks, for anyone who has ever attended them, are singular events of erudition and scholarship, delivered without notes and  that, in the age of social networking, seem a relic of an earlier period. In fact, Cousins decided to devote his final talk to the ‘lectern’ as a way of wondering if in-person presentations will still have an audience or even value when digital screens and smart phone screens replace live events. This final Friday lecture started late because the person meant to introduce Cousins, Jeffrey Kipnis, was AWOL, and was quickly replaced by psychoanalytic and feminist writer Parveen Adams, who did a fine job of introducing Cousins. A few minutes into the lecture, Kipnis arrived, and Cousins claimed this “was not planned but I think determined” and told him he could do the introduction “in the men’s lavatory!” Cousins launched into his presentation on the lectern defending scholarship and study over all other values. This final lecture, like all of Cousins' Friday afternoon talks, was, in the words of astute observer Yael Reisner, “mostly without notes, never a slide, and hardly standing next to the lectern... scholarly delivered and associatively interlaced with his idiosyncratic and insightful way of observing the world; deep, wise, humorous (and) generous. As ever, full of inspiring anecdotes told in an original and playful use of words, in a trial to further clarify an idea. Thus, for example, one of the stories this time was how every spring, when he prepares the coming autumn lecture series, dreaming about it gives him the ‘emotional weather’ so he knows he is in the right place.” She adds, "All that will be terribly missed, and being in the room with Mark Cousins in real time will never be the same as watching him online." In a way this final lecture brings to an end the legacy of AA director Alvin Boyarsky, who was head of the school when Cousins began the weekly events. But many of these lectures live on as YouTube videos.

The members of the Architectural Association (AA) in London have selected Eva Franch i Gilabert, Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, to be their next director. Franch was selected with 67 percent of the vote from a shortlist that included Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura in Rome, and Robert Mull, Head of Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton. The AA process now requires the proposed director to negotiate a contract and the final announcement will come in early March. Franch has been the Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York since 2010. In her presentation to the AA community last week, Franch i Gilabert declared, “I believe in schools and cultural institutions that are anti-institutional even when being one, that act as cultural forums and civic platforms, and that believe in the importance of constantly redefining how we want to live together. Beyond regulating predefined domains of expertise, the AA has been a space for speculation, friction, and resistance. With a highly calibrated relationship between rigor and madness, the AA has been a hotbed for architectural experimentation, and should continue to be.” Let’s hope she can bring the AA, which has significant financial and institutional challenges, back to being such a hotbed. The official AA statement:

Dear AA School Community,

We are writing as the AA Search Committee to announce the results of the AA Director election:

1,077 ballots were issued by MiVoice to the AA School Community. 876 votes were cast by the AA School Community, representing a turnout of 81.3% for the election, the highest number of cast votes and one of the highest percentile levels of participation in the last 30 years.

The candidates received:

Eva Franch I Gilabert - 587 votes cast / 67% of the vote

Pippo Ciorra - 154 votes cast / 17.6% of the vote

Robert Mull - 135 votes cast / 15.4% of the vote

We wish to congratulate Eva on her election and receiving the highest majority in a contested election since 1990. We also wish to sincerely thank Pippo and Robert for their candidacy and presentation of their ideas on the AA and the role of the director.

We have advised the AA Council of the election results and requested they proceed with the formal appointment of Eva Franch i Gilabert as the new Director of the AA School of Architecture.

On February 14, London’s Architectural Association announced its short list of three finalists to be considered for its director position. This short list, the AA claims, came from an initial response of 73 submitted applications that was then winnowed down to a “longlist of 26 candidates, of which 15 were selected for a first round of interviews.”  In this first round, there were candidates from Australia, North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. In the second round, there were just eight candidates; four men and four women. The final shortlist of three includes: Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura in Rome, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and Robert Mull, Head of Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton. All three also list themselves as architects and educators, but Ciorra and Eva Franch i Gilabert are also curators working in exhibition venues, and Mull calls himself an” urbanist and activist.” Now the AA has released statements from the three candidates and their responses to a set of questions. Starting on February 19, the three will make formal presentations to the AA community, who will vote for the new director. We are taking this opportunity to highlight a few of the differences and, as it turns out, similarities between the candidates' positions, with a link to the full statements. What makes the AA process so compelling is its openness and transparency. In this, it is unlike any other architecture institution in the world when it chooses a leader. Robert Mull, the only Brit on the list, is positioning himself as the clear favorite for those who demand that architecture foreground itself firstly as ‘social’ practice. He wants architecture “to look outwards and to judge ourselves not by the internal logic of the international architectural community but by our impact on others and on society more generally.” Mull pointedly says, “I do not like needless hierarchy and I favor plain speaking and direct action over jargon and obscuration," and is the only candidate who also asks that the AA become more engaged with London as its extended campus. He also talks about engaging with the current refugee crisis as a site for interventions. The other two candidates, Ciorra and Franch i Gilabert, would of course deny they do not support social engagement, but they clearly emphasize the need to re-engage with the avant-garde legacy of the AA. They both, in nearly similar statements, believe that architecture arrived at its present “crises” as a result of “the acceleration of hyper-capitalism on one hand and the expansion of the so-called culture industry on the other" (Ciorra) and “over the last decade and as a result of new forms of communication, omnipresent market forces and increased global mobility, cultural and educational institutions around the globe have undergone a process of homogenization" (Franch i Gilabert). They both celebrate the AA’s history of experimentation, which they want to continue, and would also both ask outside professionals and academics to the AA to establish challenges for the institution. All three thankfully recognize the need to continue supporting the AA’s publishing ventures and exhibition programs as well as upgraded PhD and research programs. It seems clear from these three statements that they each recognize the AA’s current economic distress, what that means for its future student enrollment, and the need to establish a more stable economic model and platform. But none of the three really have definitive ideas of what this new model would look like. Perhaps they will not know this until they are seated in the directors chair and facing this challenge head-on.

London’s venerable Architectural Association (AA), founded in 1847, has long stood as a resolutely independent-minded educational institution. But in the last few months, it seems to be going through a spasm of self-doubt about its future, current leadership and independence. The history of the institution suggests that these spasms happen every thirty or forty years, and it seems to be happening again. To make the situation worse, it is currently without a permanent director. But over the last few months, the AA has conducted a search for a new director, and today the Association has released its short list of candidates. The shortlist has several names well-known to American architects. Eva Franch i Gilabert, for the last eight years Chief Curator and Executive Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, has made this prestigious list. Franch is also a professor at The Cooper Union School of Architecture and has taught at Columbia University GSAPP, the IUAV University of Venice, SUNY Buffalo, and Rice University School of Architecture. Also on the list is Robert Mull, a Professor and Head of the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton in Brighton, England. He is a founding member of the architecture collective NATO and he was educated at London's Bartlett School of Architecture and at the AA. The third name on the shortlist is Pippo Ciorra, an Italian-born architect, critic, professor, prolific author and Senior Curator of the Architecture department at the Maxxi Museum in Rome since 2009. The Director of the AA has the potential to be one of the most important educators in the world of architecture, in part because of the uniqueness of the AA and its history of important directors, including Alvin Boyarsky, Mohsen Mostafavi, Alan Balfour, Brett Steele, and current interim director Samantha Hardingham. The schedule for the directors search, according to the website, proceeds with the candidates making presentations to the AA school community from February 20 to 23, followed by a vote by the AA community from February 26 to March 2, and the announcement of the winner in March 2018.

Two months before he died, in poor health and noticeably frail, architect Neave Brown packed East London’s Hackney Empire to capacity: 1,300 predominantly young architects came to hear from the man who had just been awarded the RIBA’s Royal Gold Medal. They gave him a standing ovation. Brown, who died on January 9, age 88, was the antithesis of the starchitect. He had completed his last building in the UK nearly 40 years earlier and a decade later finally put down his (pre-digital) drafting pens to become a painter. The medal came as a result of a reappraisal of his contribution to the architecture of housing and citymaking against the contemporary backdrop of a housing crisis, an expanding city, and the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. Brown studied at London’s Architectural Association in the 1950s and was not alone in rejecting tower blocks as a model for the future, but few did more to develop an alternative model and do so with such a high level of architectural ambition and skill. His was a street-based architecture, low, ground-hugging, and dense, that owed as much to his admiration for the Georgian terraces of London as it did to a more apparent inspiration—Le Corbusier, for Brown had been both designer and cocurator of the retrospective of the Swiss architect’s work held at the Hayward gallery in 1987. In 1965, Brown completed a terrace of five houses at Winscombe Street in the London Borough of Camden. To meet the government’s demanding Parker Morris Committee space standards, Brown ingeniously created interior spaces that afforded both spaciousness and flexibility. Although thoroughly modern, the terrace fit the London street pattern, with clearly identifiable front doors a few steps up from the pavement and a shared garden behind. It encouraged sociability, a place where neighbors could and would drop by. It was here at Winscombe Street that Brown and his wife, Janet, brought up their children Victoria, Aaron, and Zoe, putting his ideas about the “intergenerational home” to the test. In the same year, Camden Borough Council appointed Sydney Cook as its chief architect committed to finding new models of low-rise high-density housing. Meeting Brown and visiting Winscombe Street convinced Cook that he had found the architect to design Camden’s future. Brown’s first project for Camden, Fleet Road, comprised 72 flats and a shop, with planted shared roof terraces and individual balconies and gardens. Built at the same density as a tower block, it rose from one to four stories. In later years Brown moved from Winscombe Street to Fleet Road, again becoming both resident architect and conscientious neighbor. Brown’s most famous project, Alexandra Road estate, was not so much a housing scheme as a microcosm of the modern city, incorporating a community center, two schools, shops, a youth club, and a maintenance depot, as well as 500 terraced homes along a gently curving street. Each flat has its front door to the street and a balcony facing south. The street and, parallel to it, a linear park contributed two new and distinctive public spaces to the city. Built at a time of rocketing inflation, the costs spiraled, and this, along with the uncompromising modernity of the design, caused controversy. The political changes brought by Margaret Thatcher effectively took housing out of the hands of local authorities and placed it with the national house builders. The future of London became, for a period, suburban in style and density. The experiment with low-rise high-density housing was stopped short, and Brown had to look beyond Britain for work. It was the public spaces of Alexandra Road and the integration of complex social facilities with housing that attracted the aldermen of The Hague to appoint Brown in 1987 to design a project of equivalent complexity and even higher density on the Zwolsestraat, marking the boundary of the city to the sand dunes and sea. Designed with David Porter, the project was at an advanced stage, with the building rising from the ground, when the developer-client determined to discard the intricate street-based public realm as designed and replace it with deck access. The architects relinquished the project. Brown was more successful with a delicate cluster of apartments built outside Bergamo in Italy and a second Dutch project, the Medina from 1993–2002, designed for central Eindhoven and aided by Jo Coenen, the state architect for Holland. In 2012, Brown was invited by the residents to join them to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the project’s completion. The architectural quality of Brown’s British projects was confirmed by their listing as historic monuments (Alexandra Road in 1993, Fleet Road in 2010, and Winscombe Street in 2014). As significant was Brown’s evident rapport with those that lived in the homes he designed. The listing of Alexandra Road as “Grade 2” (Buckingham palace is Grade 1) inspired the film, made in 2010 by residents about their experiences, entitled One Below the Queen. Alexandra Road was completed just as architects were becoming “postmodern.” Brown was not unhappy to be considered an ‘’old-fashioned modernist’’ remaining intellectually engaged with the formal language of architecture and its relevance to an inclusive society. The reappraisal of Brown’s work comes at a time when London’s population is rapidly growing, there is a housing shortage, and London’s skyline is under threat. We are again seeking new models for raising density but maintaining the scale of the city.

The fate of the 16 Architectural Association (AA) staff members who were warned that their jobs were at risk in November has finally come to light. As reported by The Architect’s Journal, nine of the 16 were deemed “redundant” by the AA, and AA Files editor Tom Weaver has resigned. The cuts come as the London-based school has been roiled by financial issues. Samantha Hardingham, the AA’s interim director, told The Architect’s Journal that the reorganization was a response to a “massive” increase in rent and rates and the costs of an ongoing renovation of the school’s headquarters in Bedford Square. The school’s reorganization hasn’t been without pushback, as architects and critics from all over the world have expressed concern over the staff reductions and possible closing of the AA Files. Five of the eight positions at the AA’s publication department, responsible for producing the AA Files, have been slashed, and there are only two full-time staff members left there following Weaver’s departure. Despite the changes in recent years at the AA, the AA Files under Weaver has consistently been praised as the journal’s “golden years”. ‘The AA Files was one of the best things about the last 10 years at the association,” said Irenee Scalbert, a former AA professor and current member of the AA Files editorial board. “It found a good editor who is a big loss. To have a magazine is one thing; to have a good one with a capable editor is another. It was a sophisticated publication that gave evidence that the AA was good at architecture.” Hardingham has repeatedly stressed that the cuts are part of a larger reorganization process that will guarantee the school’s continued financial solvency. In addition to focusing more heavily on development, the school will also attempt to receive taught degree-awarding powers, which would allow them to award bachelor’s degrees. Two of the 16 aforementioned threatened staff members have been reassigned to different departments within the AA, while the remaining four have remained at their current positions.

Since the Architectural Association (AA) announced it would slash staff from its publications division last week, the architecture community in Britain and abroad has expressed deep concern over cuts that could impact the AA Files, the school's influential journal of record. The Architect's Newspaper (AN) has obtained copies of letters to the AA sent by alums, former teachers, design curators, and others. In a letter to AA Board of Trustees President David Porter, the three curators of MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design expressed "strongest concern" over the closing of the AA Files and the school's publications and exhibitions departments. Martino Stierli, chief curator; Barry Bergdoll, curator; and Sean Anderson, associate curator asked the AA to wait until a new director is appointed before making drastic changes to the institution. "While we do not have a full understanding of the complex situation that the school is facing in this difficult moment, we nevertheless unequivocally urge you to consider whether it might not be possible to work with interested parties to see if there is another solution," they said. The cuts come as the AA searches for a new director after director Brett Steele left in 2016 after 11 years of service. Interim director Samantha Hardingham has handled operations since Steele's departure. Alum Peter Wilson, founding principal of BOLLES+WILSON, expressed "shock and horror" at the decision to get rid of the AA Publications department. (Editor's note: The AA hasn't confirmed whether the division will be shut down entirely.) Writing to Hardingham, Tim Benton, professor emeritus of art history at the Open University and longtime AA instructor, addressed the difficult role of the interim director but asked the school to find a different money-saving alternative to staff cuts. "The AA has always published and exhibited," Benton said. "To downgrade the reputation of the school is not a wise move and those who decide to dumb down an historic institution should also be held accountable." Porter commented on the school's process in an email to AN: "No final decisions have yet been made in respect of AA publications or indeed any other function subject to restructuring proposals," he wrote. "Every effort is being made to ensure the essential value of these functions will not be lost." AN has reached out to Porter for additional comment on staff cuts, but has not heard back at press time. In a five-page memo from August, before staff cuts were announced, Archigram founder Peter Cook lamented the school's direction and what he sees as a cultural shift towards put-together "'corporate'" Ivy League–type students. "Whatever happened to those picky, witty, contentious, interesting, resourceful, Identifiable [sic] AA types? Did they die out?" Cook asked. The letters are collected here for public review, and AN will add to the folder as more letters reach our inbox.

The prestigious Architectural Association (AA) has sent letters to 16 staff warning that a consultation period had begun and that they were at risk of being fired to cut costs. The London-based school notified two employees in the membership department, two in exhibitions, two in HR, four in development and six members of the publications department. While the AA has not come to a final decision, critics of the move fear that this will spell the end of the much-lauded AA Files, the school’s journal of record. Founded in 1981 by Alvin Boyarsky, director of the AA at the time, the AA Files have grown to become what some consider one of the best architectural magazines in print today. Featuring essays, criticism, and writing that conveys original ideas with a sense of wit, the journal frequently featured articles unlikely to be found in any other publication. Speaking to the The Architect’s Journal, Architecture Foundation Director Ellis Woodman lamented the AA Files’ possible demise. "Under Tom Weaver’s editorship, they’ve been enjoying a golden period producing the best long­form writing about architecture in the world," he said. Woodman also called the dissolution of AA exhibitions a "tragic diminution of architectural discourse in London." Interim director Samantha Hardingham announced the cuts as the AA continues to search for a new director after the departure of 11 year veteran Brett Steele in 2016. An AA spokesperson issued a statement to the Journal, saying that the non-academic restructuring was done in such a way as to minimize the impact to the school’s operations or academic programming. "The AA is founded on the idea that it must know when to change. This restructuring is being undertaken in the best interests of the AA, and is necessary to support its sustainable future," the spokesperson added.