Will, I totally agree that spelling is not the indicator of a good designer. Most of my comments above pertain to critical thinking, but I do also think that being able to represent your work to a certain standard is really important and should be part of architectural education. Look at BIG; usually pretty simple concepts but also usually conveyed in a way that is both compelling and easy for clients to understand. I am not saying we need to pander to the money, nor that all work should be simple, just that teaching students about presentation and professionalism is also important to a certain degree. 

^ oh really? the work criticized is supposedly graduate level work, if that's the case, then the work i was pimping in 1st semester of undergrad, was pushing Phd. 

oh wait, wadw, your comment is like the D students, smoking dope, while laughing at the cockroaches mounting the hamster carcass, carry on.

i was being silly and exuberant before, but seriously, what about an archinect-based grounded theory study to 'take the pulse' of what archinect readers/contributors think architectural research in practice and education is and should be?

This is a reasonable and doable study appropriate in this situation, especially given that David Rutten and others have noted the problem is partially a lack of standards or consistency for what architectural research is at a time when computation and formal scientific methods are expected to be part of architectural research.  A grounded theory approach will help establish the dimensions of the concept of research as architects and architecture students currently understand it.  From such an understanding, paths forward can be designed and tested based not in conjecture but a data set about how architects understand research. 

Sure any academic can do this study.  But I do think it would be super cool if it was a community-led initiative. 

@b3tadine, maybe we should have t-shirts printed.

maybe the kids just want to enjoy their last semester free from the constraints of contemporary practice.  Which as I'd imagine most people will agree, is a shit grinder of door schedules and street tree applications for fresh new interns.  I am a student in critique of these trends as well and I would say that at any well established school, we will inevitably know enough of "practical building" by the end of our years.  

There is something very assuring about the images that are coming out of some of the british schools.  What you are seeing are students on the threshold between analog and digital.  I would agree with the argument that this dystopian-aesthetic is romantic and can be tiresome.  However at least there is a counterculture against the bullshit that Schumacher and followers are producing.  Nobody actually gives a fuck about what that guy has to say about some crappy top-down manifesto.  He can take that manifesto and shove it up his pompous ass for all I care.  we are not living in Tron yet, get over yourself man.

David, now there's a logo t-shirt I'd buy.