Criteria of the Accord

Accreditation Procedures

  • Is your accreditation process transparent and consistent, conducted in relation to individual programs in confidence and with firmly established procedures and conditions?

  • Are those involved in the accreditation process knowledgeable and competent in matters related to architecture accreditation, education and practice?

  • Is your accreditation of individual programs, academic awards, or qualifications and not of institutions?

  • Are your evaluations of specified academic programs conducted by peer reviewers and include review of the program’s self-evaluation documents, a site visit, and inspection of student work?

  • Is the standard of students’ work the main criterion in determining your accreditation?

  • Do you conduct periodic reevaluation to maintain accreditation status?

  • Do you have adequate mechanisms to prevent conflict of interest in the decisions you make?

  • Do you recognize that quality is primarily the responsibility of the programs themselves, and support this principle in your criteria and procedures?

  • Do your criteria and procedures promote internal quality assurance and provide programs with clear guidance on the requirements for self-assessment and external review?

  • Have your standards and criteria been subject to reasonable consultation with stakeholders and are revised at regular intervals to ensure relevance to needs?

  • Do your criteria or standards and procedures take into account follow-up mechanisms?

  • Do you specify the way in which criteria will be applied and the types of evidence needed to demonstrate that they are met?

  • Do you have published documents, which clearly state what you expect from programs, in the form of quality criteria or standards and procedures for self-assessment and external review?

  • Do you have an external review process that is carried out by teams of experts consistent with the characteristics of the institution or program being reviewed, where experts can provide input from various perspectives, including those of institutions, academics, students, employers or professional practitioners?

  • Do you provide programs with an opportunity to correct any factual errors that may appear in the external review report?

  • Do you make public your policies and decisions about institutions and programs, disclose the decisions about your own performance and disseminate reports on outcomes of quality assurance processes?

  • Do you have policies and procedures in place that ensure a fair and independent decision-making process in the final review of the institution or the program, providing effective procedures to deal with appeals and complaints?

  • Do you make decisions about an institution or program that take into consideration both the institution's self-assessment process and the external review?

Criteria for Accreditation

  • Do you address the suitability of the environment to deliver the program?

  • Do you address the adequacy of the leadership for the program?

  • Do you address the suitability of the team of qualified people teaching in the program?

  • Do you address if the curriculum provides broad preparation for architecture practice?

  • Do you address if there are appropriate entry, progression, and exit standards?

  • Do you address if there are adequate human, physical, financial, and information resources to support the program?

  • Do you address if the program undergoes periodic reevaluation to maintain accreditation status?

  • Do you address if the period of academic study at, or in association with, a university/tertiary-level institution is sufficient to demonstrate skills, abilities, attitudes, and knowledge at a defined standard adequate for initial entry to the architecture profession? In order to gain the balanced acquisition of subjects and capabilities, this period of academic study should normally be not less than the equivalent of five years of full-time studies.

  • Do you address if the program trains students and teachers in research techniques as an inherent part of architectural learning?

Students Performance Review

< Design >

  • Does your accreditation review students’ ability to create architectural designs that satisfy both aesthetic and technical requirements?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ knowledge of fine arts?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ adequate knowledge of urban design, planning, and the skills involved in the planning process?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ understanding of the relationships among people, buildings, environment, and the spaces between them to human needs and scale?

  • Does your accreditation review students' understanding of the methods of investigation and preparation of the brief for a design project?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ design skills to meet building users’ requirements within the cost and building regulations constraints?

< Technology >

  • Does your accreditation review students’ adequate knowledge of the basics of building technologies?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ understanding of the structural design, construction, and engineering problems associated with building design?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ adequate knowledge of physical problems and technologies and of the function of buildings so as to provide them with internal conditions of comfort and protection against the climate?

  • Does you accreditation review students' knowledge of the means of achieving ecologically sustainable design and environmental conservation and rehabilitation?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ creative competence in building techniques, founded on a comprehensive understanding of the disciplines and construction methods related to architecture?

< History & Theory >

  • Does your accreditation review students' adequate knowledge of the histories and theories of architecture and the related arts, technologies, and human sciences?

  • Does your accreditation review students' knowledge of fine arts as an influence on the quality of architectural design?

  • Does your accreditation review students' understanding of the relationship between people and buildings, and between buildings and their environment, and of the need to relate buildings and the spaces between them to human needs and scale?

  • Does your accreditation review students’ awareness of responsibilities toward human, social, cultural, urban, architectural, and environmental values, as well as architectural heritage?

<Professional Practice>

  • Does your organization review students' understanding of the role of the architect in society?

  • Does your organization review students' adequate knowledge of project financing?

  • Does your accreditation review students' understanding of the relationship between people and buildings, and between buildings and their environment, and of the need to relate buildings and the spaces between them to human needs and scale?

  • Does your organization review students' adequate knowledge of cost control?

  • Does your organization review students' adequate knowledge of methods of project delivery?

  • Does your organization review students' adequate knowledge of regulation and procedures?

< Ethics >

  • Does your organization review student’s awareness of responsibilities toward human, social, cultural, urban, architectural, and environmental values, as well as architectural heritage?