Founded in 2011, the Department of Architecture at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) is part of a young Sino-British university situated in Suzhou, part of the greater Shanghai area. In a short period of time, the Department has risen to prominence in architectural education. Fully accredited, in February 2018 it earned international validation from The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA Part 1 + 2 + 3), the first institution to do so in mainland China.Embracing both Chinese and Western knowledge traditions, the Department is closely connected with the University of Liverpool and the U.K. framework of architectural education. As such, it aims to offer a new global model of architectural education, with the fostering of students' critical thinking skills an important and distinctive characteristic of its Bachelor, Masters and Ph.D. programmes. In an environment that is ever-changing, the Department seeks to educate students in order to enable them to take advantage of arising opportunities. This includes the possibility of working as a "liberal professional" which has only recently become an option in China and offers new ways of practicing architecture for current and future generations of architects. As a relatively new and uniquely positioned architecture school, the Department affirms and advances the merits of architectural education as vital to developing creative & critical thinking skills for the longer-term future.