Over the past two decades, the increasing awareness of environmental issues has encouraged architecture schools to expand their offers on sustainability lectures and programs. Many institutions are even integrating architectural schools into the more comprehensive Environmental Design departments, which have a much more interdisciplinary approach to construction than the traditional architecture education. However, there is still within the discipline a subtle rejection of sustainability -usually stronger among historians and theorists [(A, 2009); (Baird, 2011)]-that has inadvertently distanced many architects from the entire subject of environmental problems.

Although negative views of sustainability are not prevalent, they have been nonetheless withholding the full engagement of the discipline with environmental issues, and it is the intention of this article to discuss the reasons behind these negative views. To this end, first, the literature review presents an analysis of the bad reputation of sustainability among architecture professionals and scholars in section 2. The study then places the discussion in the context of education through a careful examination of the programs and syllabi of the world's top ten architecture schools, which is further explained in section 3.

It is not the purpose of this article to cover all the complex problems of the integration of sustainability in higher education, for which there is an extensive array of general and discipline-specific research [(Wright, 2003); (Architects, 2006); (Z. & J, 2006); (S. & A, 2007);(Altomonte, 2009); (Z. et al., 2013); (D. et al., 2013); (F. et al., 2015); (Gucyeter, 2016); (B. & I, 2016); (A. et al., 2017); (B. et al., 2017)]. This discussion article hopes to bring forward a relevant analysis of the particular subject of the negative connotations associated with sustainability among some scholars. Moreover, despite the focus on architectural programs of the 2016-2017 academic period, this discussion intends to reach a readership beyond this field and timeframe to share some insights into a problem that may affect other areas of knowledge.

Architecture is a complex discipline. It involves the creative act of design, the ability to manage strict scientific data for the construction process, and the aptitude to reflect on philosophical matters as aesthetics or the conflicts of our contemporary world. Within architecture education, these multiple and interconnected dimensions are addressed on an ever-increasing variety of lectures that allow for various categorizations. Howevetr, for the specific purpose of this article, lectures are divided in the traditional areas of building technology, design, and humanities.

Building technology has been the area most committed to solving the environmental crisis, but it is also the source of some polemics that have encouraged the distrust in the concept of sustainability [(D, 2016); (Green, 2018)]. For example, the growing phenomenon of green-washing -or 'false sustainability'-has had a negative impact on the public's perception of sustainable architecture [(Jurado, 2016); (Graham, 2016)]. Authentic efforts of achieving efficient constructions are affected by the misuse of 'ecogadgets' that serve more as status symbols than as efficiency enhancers (T. et al., 2003).

Within architectural research, the international certification systems for green buildings have become a frequent target of criticism. One of the most frequent claims against leading certifications as LEED or BREEAM is that they make too much emphasis on energy efficiency, encouraging a fragmented and limited approach to sustainability (Wargo, 2010), overlooking other important problems as resource depletion or pollution (R. et al., 2009). These certifications have also been accused of endorsing deficient assessments of the building's life cycle [(H, 2009); (A. & J, 2011)], of being potentially harmful for local identities (J. & J, 2013), and of unwisely disregarding the benefits of traditional constructions (Dirlich, 2012). Still, the biggest limitation of these certifications is that their usefulness is rather symbolic since, on a global scale, the percentage of buildings achieving real sustainability is negligible [(Jarzombek, 2009); (Kozak, 2014)].

Within the area of design, attitudes towards sustainability are more complex. Trends in this area are usually guided by the built and written work of renowned practitioners, better known in the field as 'starchitects' (Ponzini, 2018). For the particular purpose of this discussion, starchitects' postures towards sustainability could be broadly divided into two major approaches, namely, sustainability seen as a guiding element intrinsic to the design process, and sustainability seen as a feature subordinated to other more important interests of the design process, as it is done with plumbing or electric systems.

Among the most publicized contemporary architects involved with green or sustainable design -the ones representing the first approach-are Richard Rogers, Bjarke Ingels, Renzo Piano, Stefano Boeri, and Ken Yeang. The active engagement of these architects with sustainability is apparent in their buildings and discourse. Their theoretical production on sustainable architecture is not as extensive as their built work, but there are noteworthy contributions as Roger's book 'Cities for a Small Planet' or the development of the concept of 'hedonistic sustainability' by Bjarke Ingels (H. & K, 2016).

For the second group of architects, efficiency is not a central aspect of the design process, and despite the mainstream popularity of sustainability, this is the prevailing approach among architectural practitioners. This, however, does not necessarily imply that these architects are unaware of environmental issues or that their buildings are less sustainable. In the work of these architects, other concerns as formal experimentation or the social role of the building take priority in the design process. Some examples of this second group are Remment Koolhaas or Peter Zumthor. Although most of their late designs do consider efficiency and environmental impact, sustainability or environmental problems are not usually part of their discourse [(O.M.A., 2018); (Zumthor, 2006)]. When talking about their own production, these architects make emphasis on other aspects of architecture as formal issues, the effects created by different spaces, or the relation of the building with its context.

Within this group, there are architects who straightforwardly condemn sustainable architecture. The most recognized personality in this regard is the American architect Peter Eisenman, an open critic of contemporary green construction. On a controversial interview from 2009, Eisenman stated that ‘“green” and sustainability have nothing to do with architecture’, adding that ‘[s]ome of the worst buildings [he has] seen are done by sustainable architects’ (Eisenman, 2009). Today most architects would not openly share this view, but there is consensus in that sustainability does not necessarily translates into good architecture, or bad for that matter [Moss, as quoted in (Hosey, 2012); (Kozak, 2016)].

Within architectural humanities, there was until recently a widespread rejection of sustainability as a serious subject of research, either as a general concept or as applied in construction. Architecture historians and theorists tend to avoid the term because of its vagueness or ambiguity [(E. & E, 2004);(Moe, 2007); (Fuller, 2010); (Schroeder, 2018)] and it is still common within this area for comments on sustainability to quickly turn into semantic disputes. The lack of serious theoretical grounds or significant architectural contribution of green architecture have also been common reasons to reject sustainability within the humanities. But perhaps the most harmful association has been that of sustainability with the uncritical acceptance of naïve discourses and compliant attitudes [(S. & A, 2007);(Jaimes, 2016)]. Two decades ago, the professor of urban planning, Peter Marcuse, stated that 'the promotion of "sustainability" may simply encourage the sustaining of the unjust status quo' (Marcuse, 1998), while more recently, Koolhaas' analysis of the smart city movement denounced that 'traditional European values of liberty, equality, and fraternity have been replaced in the 21 st century by comfort, security, and sustainability' (Koolhaas, 2014).

Besides the harm that these associations made to the image of sustainability, there was a lack of an appropriate body of knowledge on environmental problems, suitable for discussions on architecture in humanities. However, in the last decades the production of architecture history and theory has been accompanying the developments of other environmental humanities in the creation of more comprehensive and critical perspectives of sustainability [(Rawes, 2013); (Superhumanity: Design of the Self, 2018)]. A new framework for the contextualization of contemporary architecture has become available through the insights on the politics of the Anthropocene of Bruno Latour (Latour, 2004), while Kate Soper’s challenging reinterpretation of the good life (The Politics and Pleasures of Consuming Differently; Palgrave, 2009) offers valuable insights into social changes. Similarly, the works of (Cronon, 1995) and (Morton, 2007) on nature and wilderness are enriching architects’ reflections on the relationship of the built and natural world.

Despite all the criticism of current practices of sustainability, there is a general agreement on that future architects should be educated on the subject. Nevertheless, the integration of any current issue into education is bound to provoke controversies, and sustainability has not been an exception. One of the most vocal critics of the incorporation of sustainability into education is the British architect Austin Williams. In his view, environmental discourses tend to be misanthropic (Williams, 2008) and he argues that sustainability education 'undermines critical engagement and replaces it with blind loyalty' (Williams, 2013). This point of view is extreme and shared by few (R. & Wood, 2015), but is driven by a premise widely accepted among architects, which is the shortage of critical approaches to sustainability.

In order to examine how the shortcomings of sustainability perceived by architects relate to education, a review of the top ten architectural schools was made. The institutions selected were the ones occupying the top ten places of the Architectural Schools ranking made by the British firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), one of the world's leading higher education analysts. The schools and departments reviewed belong to the following universities: The National University of Singapore (NUS) and The University of Hong Kong (HK) from the Asian region; Harvard University (GSD), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California-Berkeley from the Unites States; and from Europe, the University College London-Bartlett (UCL Bartlett), Manchester University, Cambridge University, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).

The official programs and brochures that were publicly available of these ten schools were carefully examined. For the seven schools where syllabi were available (NUS, HK, Harvard GSD, Berkeley, MIT, TU Delft, and ETH Zurich), a comprehensive review was made of the contents of the lectures offered. A total of 1364 course descriptions were examined to determine if and how they addressed sustainability or current environmental issues. The categorization of a lecture as 'environmentally aware' was not strictly limited to those that used particular terms as 'sustainability' or 'environment' -or any of their variations. It was taken into account that references to these subjects were often made indirectly, as for example with the citation of an author highly concerned with environmental problems or with the inclusion of technical means that reduce the environmental impact of buildings. It should be considered that all the lectures surveyed belonged to the architectural departments. This study examines the standard curriculum of the architecture schools and does not consider cross-listed lectures or other options offered in which students tailor their majors or minors with lectures from other departments, making each student's experience highly individual.

The percentage of lectures by area who address the environmental issues is shown in Table 1, while Table 2 shows the percentage of lectures in the six schools where the available information allowed for a distinction between graduate and undergraduate lectures. It is important to note that the main purpose of the survey is not to conduct an exhaustive evaluation of sustainability in architectural education ⁠—for which the data is not suitable— but to explore the content of programs and syllabi to discuss possible connections with the issues covered in the literature review.

The way environmental issues are confronted within architectural education is a reflection of the way the subject is dealt with in research and practice. It could be said that sustainability has already been assimilated within the technical areas of architecture. However, some of the drawbacks that architects perceive in sustainability are reflected on the curricula, which presents the fragmented approach seen in practice and it is overly focused on energy efficiency. There is, however, a promising interest of a small group of lectures in the interaction of the built and natural systems among professionals that is reflecting a cosnideration of the life cycle of materials, water treatment, and even architectural waste.

Within design studios, the situation is more complex since students must learn to comply with construction specification while creating functional spaces with aesthetic quality, meaning, and in the best-case scenario, even artistic value. While some studios place special emphasis on environmental issues, the tendency is for sustainability to be treated as one of the factors among the many that students must consider when designing a building. Most probably, this integrative tendency will continue, and sustainability measures will become as assimilated to the design process as are now, for example, safety measure. Irrespectively of positions on the integration of sustainability into design studios, the main agent driving the transition to a more sustainable architecture is the increasing legislation to minimize the environmental impact of constructions. Therefore, if design studios keep in touch with the real-world requirements, the inclusion of sustainability will eventually become unavoidable.

The engagement with environmental issues of architectural humanities is certainly limited if compared with other areas of the discipline. In the case of architecture education, the knowledge of historical and cultural problems associated with environmental issues becomes particularly relevant since construction happens to be one of the human activities with high impact on the environment (O. et al., 2009). However, the longstanding architects' interest in nature has been relatively slow to transform into a sound critical perspective on environmental problems [(Buchanan, 2012); (Ursprung, 2017)]. At present, this situation is rapidly improving since references from environmental humanities are providing the historical, theoretical, and speculative approaches to evaluate the socio-cultural dimensions of environmental problems [(A. et al., 2015);(Carr, 2004)]. Moreover, examinations of environmental issues could be integrated into architectural education through indirect paths, as through the growing interest in social problems related to the environment as green gentrification (A. & J, 2020) or social justice (R. et al., 2020).

Universities have the responsibility to keep challenging knowledge claims with prescriptive tendencies (J. & B, 2002), and therefore, critical attitudes towards sustainability discourses should continue within architectural humanities, but without undermining the importance of environmental issues. Sustainability has become ubiquitous in discussion of all areas of our contemporary world and it can no longer be dissociated from development plans or political agendas. For that reason, and regardless of positions on the subject, architectural humanities must provide students the proper tools to develop well informed arguments and strategies to confront the issue.

Attitudes towards sustainability within architecture are associated with worldviews, ideologies, and even local contexts, and a unanimous agreement on its meaning and implications is perhaps unachievable. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the discipline of architecture is used to cope with controversial concepts -as beauty or even the concept of architecture itself-and the evolving nature of the concept of sustainability should be accepted within all areas of the discipline [(M. & S.W, 2012); (S. & A, 2007)].